


How to Fail Practical Business Without Really Trying

by Signel_chan



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, a bunch of relative strangers run a coffee shop for a class, basically the golden deer are our starring cast, nothing too big, playing with canon big time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28884870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signel_chan/pseuds/Signel_chan
Summary: The only reason Claude ended up in Practical Business was because of some blackmail, and the only reasons he stuck around were because one, it was that or have the bribe fall through, and two, the cute professor regular was too hard to ignore. Besides, the Golden Perk without him would be like a deer without horns, it just wouldn't work, right?
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 7
Kudos: 46
Collections: The Three Houses AU Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> THERE WILL BE ART WITH THIS. Next chapter, in fact! c:  
> Also please don't question my choices on changing up canon facts, I promise there's 100% a reason I've done what I've done!

In the college town of Garreg Mach, there were only a few things that the residents were terrified of. Spring Break was always chaotic, given that the majority of students at all of the schools were of drinking age and could enjoy themselves however and whenever they pleased. Summertime was a dull season where shops and restaurants struggled to stay in business for whenever the droves of students came back. And then, for the students themselves, the class known as Practical Business was easily the most dreaded course needed for any degree program. It was a year-long class that took up more time than any other course ever thought to do, and it was a test of mental, physical, and social strength to get through it unscathed and with a passing grade.

The course was rather simple on paper: a group of students, usually junior- or senior-year students within a business program, were given a shop to manage and run for the entire school year, getting their grade based on attendance and how well the store was taken care of. It was some of these students’ first experience in retail and service positions, and for those who weren’t serious about their business aspirations it was a dream-killer. Yet it was oddly popular with the students in terms of enrollment at the start of the year, but the weak were quickly weeded out and only the strong made it to the end when they handed back the keys to the professor.

It was a breezy morning during the Verdant Moon when the assignments were given out and the groups of brand-new coworkers got to meet each other for the first time outside their new business. The Golden Perk was the name of the coffee shop that several students met outside of, a couple of them looking through the windows at the dusty tabletops inside, while others stood around on their phones or glancing at everyone else, wondering if they were in the right place. “Does anyone here have the keys to this place?” a woman leaning against the locked door asked, annoyance in her voice as she brushed through one of her pink pigtails with her fingers, catching a knot or two along the way. “This wind is really starting to mess with my hair.”

“We’re still missing someone, so it’s gotta be whoever that is that has the key,” a bigger man replied, flexing his shoulders back and forth to stretch them. “I counted how many of us there are, so I know I’ve gotta be right.”

Tucking his phone into the pocket of his jacket, embroidered with his name on the front and back, a purple-haired man looked at the muscular one with disgust across his face. “My apologies, but if you are choosing to speak like that now, I may have to drop the course. No esteemed son of Gloucester will have to put up with—”

“Sorry I’m late! Traffic was crazy over on campus!” Huffing as he jumped off the back of his motorcycle, which he parked messily against the curb, Claude von Riegan held up the key to the coffee shop that would change his life—and the lives of everyone there with him—forever. “Couldn’t get through a light without someone running across the street, school is definitely back in session, my friends.”

“It’s about time, we’ve only been waiting here forever!” the pink-haired one whined, pushing herself up off the door as Claude went to unlock it. “I even made sure I’d get here on time today, only for you to fail us like that. Who do you think you are, making everyone else wait for you?”

“Oh, sorry, next time I’ll create a mess of lawsuits by running everyone over, that’ll be great. You’re willing to pay my legal bills, aren’t you?” Claude winked at the woman, making her roll her eyes as she pushed past him and the now-open door, he and everyone else entering in after her. First impressions were everything, and while his hadn’t been the greatest, neither had hers, and neither had the coffee shop’s overall.

It was dingy and dusty, showing its age and the fact that no one had been inside of it since the last session of Practical Business had ended. “This is going to need some real elbow grease to get back in working order,” another one of the women said, fiddling with her side-swept ponytail as she looked around. “You ready to help with that, big guy?”

“Definitely! I’ll scrub everything so hard, you’ll be able to see yourself in it!” His clap was booming, echoing against the walls and causing everyone’s ears to rattle. “Uh, before we get to that, shouldn’t we go around introducing ourselves? Might make working together a lot more fun, since we’re all strangers and stuff.”

“That’s a great idea!” Jumping up onto the countertop, the woman stopped playing with her hair as she looked down at everyone with a determined smile on her face. “My name’s Leonie Pinelli, I’m here because I need to get certified to run a freelancer’s guild and it was either this or three classes of accounting.” She nodded towards her fast friend, hoping to get him to introduce himself next.

He took the bait, giving another booming clap and earning the ire of the purple-haired one who already hated his guts. “The name’s Raphael. Raphael Kirsten, if we’re being formal. I need to know how to run my parents’ place when they retire and I thought this class’d do it for me.”

“I’d be better off if this was a store, not a coffee shop,” the pink-haired woman told them, giving the two a dismissive look before flipping both of her pigtails over her shoulders and giving them (as well as her chest) a bounce. “I’m Hilda Goneril, I’m planning on owning a jewelry shop when I’m done here, and I don’t want to have to pay someone else to run it for me so there’s that.”

“All of you with your ‘grand’ aspirations that will get you absolutely nowhere in life.” The self-proclaimed son of Gloucester shook his head, his asymmetrical undercut bobbing as he did. “I, the noble Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, am only in your presence because this is the last course required for me to attain my full inheritance from my family. No degree required for my goals in life.”

There was a lull after his introduction, while Leonie got down from the counter and went behind it, Raphael following her, as they searched for things to clean the thick layer of grime off of everything around them. They came back from behind the counter with towels in their hands, more than they could use on their own, and a mousey-looking woman with blue hair stepped up to take some from them. “I-I’m Marianne von Edmund,” she stated, avoiding eye contact with everyone in the room, even the one she was grabbing towels from. “I’m not really sure why I’m here…”

“Great, we’ve already got one person who’s going to bail on us,” a small, young-looking woman remarked, giving Marianne a glare. “I’m hoping I can graduate early and start helping my family earn their fortune back, and someone like you is not going to help me manage that.”

“I-I didn’t mean to make you think I’m not going to help.”

“Whatever, I’m sure you’re not the only one.” The woman glanced pointedly at Lorenz, who was more than happy to return the favor, before she ran behind the counter. “You can call me Lysithea von Ordelia, and my place will be in the kitchen, making fancy sweets and treats for everyone to buy. My cakes are to die for, according to everyone who’s had one.”

Claude looked around the room, seeing everyone’s reaction to Lysithea’s most humble of brags. “I’d be down to try that for myself,” he said, before clearing his throat. “At any rate, it’s nice to meet you all. The name’s Claude von Riegan, and no, I’m not interested in dating any of you, no matter what my profiles might tell you. Single, ready to mingle, not interested in classmates.”

“Don’t you sound rather cocky there?” Hilda asked, batting her eyelashes a single time before motioning to her mouth as if she was putting a gun against her lips. “Thankfully I’ve got no time for guys like you, I’ve already got a boyfriend, thanks.”

“That’s cool, didn’t ask.” To play off of her gun motion, Claude put both of his hands into the position and fired them both at her a few times, before turning to see who all was left. “Let’s take this from the top, we’ve gotten to know just about everyone now, yeah?”

A smaller man standing in Raphael’s shadow at the moment (which, to be fair, would’ve made anyone look smaller) raised his hand. “Just me left, actually. I’m Ignatz Victor and, well, Raphael knows why I’m here. I live with him and his sister and we took this class together, so that we make sure he passes.”

“That’s right, we sure did,” Raphael agreed, a goofy grin coming alight across his face. “Maya and I want Ignatz here to help us take over, but not to work. He’s an artist, but he doesn’t want everyone knowing that for some reason.”

“An artist, eh?” Leonie repeated, giving Ignatz a once-over with an impressed glint in her eyes. “How much will it cost to get you to decorate this place?”

Seeming like he was being put on the spot, Ignatz raised his hands defensively, stammering, “I’m not an interior decorator, I don’t know how great of a job I’d be able to do if that’s what you want from me! I was thinking I could do more of the money, or a back-office job, since that’s what I’ll end up doing when Raphael’s parents pass him their place.”

“Darn, I was really looking forward to spending some good money on getting someone to spruce up this dingy, dark shop and make it as inviting as its name makes it sound.” Snapping her fingers like she was genuinely bummed out, Leonie happened to glance to the side to see Hilda’s eyes going wide at the idea of money being thrown around for decoration. “What, do you think you’re up for the job?”

“Can’t say I really know professional decorating myself, but I can definitely see brightening up this place. All it’ll cost is the price of the gems and the fabrics, and maybe a couple of new conversation pieces!” Her entire attitude having changed since her spat with Claude, Hilda seemed enthused to do Leonie’s bidding when it came to decorating, although Leonie was clearly beginning to have second thoughts about how much money she could use on the job.

Thankfully, someone else noticed the apprehension in her gaze and stepped right in. “Whatever you cannot cover, I will wholeheartedly borrow from the family coffers to make this place functional,” Lorenz said, the snooty air to his words putting everyone off despite him making a kind offer. “It would be a shame, after all, if everyone failed due to a lack of business because of how downtrodden this establishment is.”

Lysithea scoffed, not caring about Lorenz’s kindness in the moment. “Maybe you can speak less like you’ve deepthroated a dictionary and more like a normal person. You’re irritating me every time you open your mouth.”

Now voices were beginning to raise, as Lorenz started to argue with Lysithea, Leonie tried to steer them back to talking about money, Raphael and Ignatz began having their own conversation, Marianne had disappeared from everyone’s line of sight, and Hilda was standing almost in the middle of things, trying to escape the crosshairs of anyone’s wayward statements. Thinking fast on his feet, Claude did what he’d seen get done before, except choosing to hop onto a table rather than the counter. “Hey, numbskulls, are we really about to make us all hate each other before we’ve even seen the ugliness of the service industry?” he asked them all, cupping his mouth to amplify his voice to a level over theirs. “Can you all please just shut up and act like grown adults, rather than a bunch of chi—”

He cut himself off with a scream, as the table underneath his feet lurched backward, two of the legs simultaneously snapping off and sending him crashing to the floor. He landed flat on his back, the whole world around him spinning and turning as he realized what had just happened to him, and soon he had everyone else hovering over him, looking down to make sure he was okay. “I noticed there are termites in the kitchen,” Marianne’s quiet voice said in the silence after the fall, “so that makes sense that it happened. Should someone call an exterminator to get rid of them?”

“I think you’re going to be chipping in a lot more than you anticipated for this place there, Gloucester,” Leonie remarked, taking her eyes off Claude and his stunned position on the floor to look at Lorenz, who had paled at the mention of termites in the building. “This place is going to need all-new tables and chairs so this doesn’t happen again, you know.”

“I…am aware,” he replied, swallowing down any other words he may have wanted to say.

“Ew, if there are bugs in here, I’m out,” Hilda told everyone, flouncing her hair as she turned away from the group to head for the door. “Someone let me know when that problem’s taken care of, I’ll get right to decorating once it’s not critter-infested around here.” She seemed all-too-eager to get out of there, and it wasn’t hard for just about everyone else to follow, heading their separate ways for the day until it was just Claude, Leonie, and Marianne still outside, one of them on the phone with a pest-control company against her will (since she’d seen the infestation herself) and the other two chatting about what had gone down.

“You never really said why you’re taking this class, did you Claude?” Leonie asked him, after she watched him lock up the shop and tuck the key into his pocket. “Is there some secret reason you don’t want everyone knowing? Or did you just want to crack a joke instead of share that about yourself?”

“Little bit of both, if we’re being honest. I’m really here at the request of the professor herself, I might been in a bit of debt to her for reasons you’re not allowed to know, and this was her way of clearing the slate.” Closing his eyes, Claude thought about what he’d done to owe the professor (not in a monetary sense, but in terms of other favors), grimacing when he realized what kind of game he’d been playing. “But that’s in the past, I’m here now and I promise you, I’m not going to be a weak link in this crew.”

“That’s great! Because I’m not exactly confident that everyone else is going to pull their weight, not after those first impressions. Do they think they’re just going to get to coast by without doing their own work?” Leonie sounded unimpressed, and while she was refraining from naming names, Claude knew who she was speaking about.

Thankfully, one of the people being referred to was not the one standing a few paces away, finishing up the conversation with pest control. “They said they’ll be here this evening, but it doesn’t come as a surprise that bugs got in,” Marianne told them both once she’d hung up the call, her face reddened from the whole endeavor. “I guess there was a bad case of termites in the building next door a couple months back.”

“As long as it gets taken care of, that’s all that matters. Thanks for taking one for the team and making the call, Marianne,” Leonie said, giving a genuine smile in her direction and watching as she panicked, nodding and coughing out a welcome statement before running down the street towards the main body of the campus. “I’m not really sure about _her_ , she seems like she wants to work but I don’t know if she’s cut out for it…”

“Look at you, sounding like some cutthroat manager! Glad to have you on the team, Leonie, you’re going to make this a breeze. Now if you’ll excuse me,” Claude cracked his knuckles and climbed onto his bike, which he revved up the moment he could, “I have somewhere I need to be.”

“What, you got a hot date that you were going to skip out on our work for?”

He revved the bike again, lifting the kickstand and slowly rolling off the sidewalk and into the street. “Nah, I’m a devoted employee if it gets the class credit. I’m headed home to chill and get caught up on my other classes, can’t let myself get behind just because I’m working in a coffee shop.” He watched Leonie laugh, giving her a wave before speeding off down the road in the opposite direction of where Marianne had disappeared to moments before. Claude had no intention of going to the heart of the campus, not when he had better places he could go to pass the time.

Places such as his single-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Garreg Mach, where he lived with his motorcycle stored on the balcony and all of his class materials strewn across the floor. When he’d said he was single and ready to mingle, he’d been lying; as much as he would’ve loved to have a date in his life, he knew that his bachelor lifestyle was too comfortable to be moved past quite yet, and he wasn’t going to give it up just because he fell in love with someone. But he’d been telling the truth when he’d said he had no interest in dating a classmate, especially not one he’d be seeing on the regular there at the coffee shop, and he hoped that he wouldn’t end up getting prodded further about that claim.

But, based on how that first day had gone, he was fairly confident that if he was going to find someone to sweep him off his feet and make him consider changing his ways, it wasn’t going to be any of those people he’d had the (mis)fortune of meeting that day.

* * *

Claude parked his motorcycle in the designated parking outside of the college building where the classroom for Practical Business would have been located, if there was ever a physical class to take. It was a few days after the termite fumigation at the coffee shop had taken place, and he’d been the unlucky soul who’d been given the bill to take to the professor to get it paid for, since that was the one thing that they as the new “owners” of the shop were not liable for. He’d tried to push the task onto someone else, but none of them wanted to do it and no matter how much he said that he really did not want to go, he was given the bill and told to get it taken care of as soon as he could.

His footsteps echoed through the quiet building, there seemingly no classes going on around him as he walked down the hall, but when he ascended the stairs up towards where the offices were he could hear voices of instructors and students alike beginning to fill the silence. “Sometimes wish you would’ve told me I could take a sit-down class instead,” he grumbled, catching his reflection in the windows on every door as he passed. “It would’ve made my life so much easier, and yours as well.”

At the end of the hallway was a second staircase, up to the third floor, but he ducked past it and continued down a narrower side hallway, which found its end at a single door, a faded nameplate sitting on it. Steeling himself with a deep breath and a steady hand, Claude gave a solid knock on the door before pushing it open, finding the office to be empty. “Huh, thought you said you’d be here,” he remarked, stepping in and pulling the bill out of his pocket to throw it onto the desk. “Guess not having to see you is better for me, though.”

“Oh, you’re not who I’m looking for,” a female voice said from the doorway, and Claude turned around to see that a different professor, one he’d seen around on campus a few times but hadn’t actually met before, was staring at him. “For a moment I thought I was possibly _still_ drunk and was seeing things, but you’re definitely not who belongs here.”

“Nope, just here to drop something off,” he said, ducking past her to leave the office before she could say anything else. “Hope he comes back soon for you!” He could hear her muttering something but couldn’t make out the words as he headed down the narrow hallway, checking over his shoulder to see her still standing there where he’d left her. “I’ll go out on a limb and guess she’s here to talk to him about a student’s performance in something, but what that could be…not the slightest idea. Classes have been going for a few days!”

When he got back down to the empty lower floor of the building, he picked up his pace and got outside as fast as he possibly could, making his entire time spent inside last a matter of minutes. His bike was right where he’d left it, and he hopped on and set off like a rocket, wanting to get away from the building and any potential run-ins with the professor as fast as he could; besides, he had somewhere more important he needed to be right then. It was well within work hours at the shop, even though it was closed as they worked on remodeling it to fit their group’s tastes, and he could only use the excuse of having to drop the bill off for so long before someone called him out on it.

When he got down to the main street in town where the shop was located, he could see that a large, unsightly moving truck was sitting outside the front door, taking up the spot where he’d been parking whenever he showed up. That meant he had to park on the side of the building in the alleyway, which wasn’t a huge concern when the biggest threat in the town was wild animals causing havoc, not anyone hellbent on stealing someone’s custom-designed motorcycle. “It’s about time you show up,” Leonie chided when Claude came around the corner after parking. “Me and Raphael have done just about all the work ourselves so far, it’ll be great having a third pair of hands to help.”

“Don’t mind me if I’m wrong, but don’t you already have a third, fourth, even fifth pair of hands around here?” he replied, knowing that he could see several heads that belonged to people not mentioned inside the shop. “Why aren’t they doing the work?”

“Lorenz insists that what he’s done financially is enough to get him out of doing physical labor, which, sure, we’ll let him think that. Ignatz is directing where things go, according to his designs, and Hilda is ‘helping’ him with that, but all I’ve seen her do is send texts to someone and take some selfies.” Looking into the window herself, Leonie counted off everyone she’d named so far, taking a moment before continuing with, “Marianne and Lysithea are working in the kitchen, Lysithea brought her recipe book for some sweets and wanted to try them out.”

“And that leaves poor, old Claude to do the rest of the hard work?” he asked, an unamused tone to his voice, and Leonie nodded. “Of course it does. Well, no sense in standing around griping about it, if I want to pass the class it’s going to be because I do my part. What do you need me to do?”

She flashed him a grin, motioning to the truck with her head. “Raphael’s in there, he’ll pass you furniture and you take it inside to put it wherever Ignatz, and Hilda I guess, tell you to put it. I’ll be doing the same.”

Based on that, and that alone, Claude assumed they’d be carrying tables and chairs into the coffee shop, because they were the necessary tools to have a successful business going. He was not expecting to approach the back of the truck and have Raphael standing there with a large shelf with glass panels held in his arms. “I don’t think I’m carrying this one on my own,” he said, trying to catch Leonie’s attention before it was shoved at him. “Might be a two-person job this time. Or a Raphael one.”

“Sorry, can’t get out of the truck holding this,” Raphael told him, setting it down and pushing the edge of it to where Claude was waiting for it. “You can carry it yourself, though, it’s not as heavy as it looks.”

“I’m also not built like the truck you’re standing in, so maybe you should rethink trusting me with this one.” Yes, the moment Claude’s hands gripped the bottom of the shelf and he tried moving it on his own he knew that he was not going to be getting anywhere with it on his lonesome, and having Leonie help him might not have even been enough at that point. She did come around the truck as well to pick up the other side, and while they were plenty capable together, Raphael still ended up jumping out of the back of the truck and assisting them getting the cabinet through the door of the shop and into its permanent position against the wall.

It was a nightmare to get inside and situated, and the moment they stepped away from where it had been set down, Hilda was eyeing it with a bright expression. “I have just the things to put in there,” she told everyone with a smile. “We’re working at the Golden Perk, so I’m going to fill all of those shelves with golden things! Bangles and bracelets and jewelry I’ve made myself, I’ll be making so much when people window shop while they sip!”

“Hold on there, I have a better idea, although your wishes for making some extra money on the side are a great backup plan.” Ignatz looked at the shelf, then around the top of the walls in the shop, looking at how overall bare the upper part of the building was in terms of decoration. “We need to have a theme. Has anyone asked Professor Hanneman what themes students in previous years have used?”

At once, every eye in the room who’d heard the question was looking at Claude, who knew that they were all thinking the same thing. “No, I haven’t asked, and no, I don’t know what the answer is off the top of my head. Just because I’m here because of him doesn’t mean I know all of his motives here.”

“That’s fine, if you aren’t aware then we can assume he doesn’t have a theme he prefers students to stick with.” Tapping his chin, Ignatz continued to look around for a few seconds longer before his eyes settled back on the shelves they’d just brought inside. “I think I have an idea for what direction we can go in. Hilda, care to discuss this with me?”

“I guess I can do that,” she replied with a flippant shrug, clearly unhappy that her original suggestion had been demoted to second-best. While they stepped aside, out of the way, to have their conversation, the moving crew went back outside to bring the rest of the furnishing into the building. There wasn’t anything else quite as heavy as that cabinet had been, for which Claude was thankful, but by the time the back of the truck was empty and the store had been refilled with furniture, his arms and legs ached from the extent of the work he’d just put in.

On the other hand, Raphael and Leonie both seemed unfazed by the work, coming back inside laughing and joking around. “Since this shop has its belongings, I assume we are good to leave?” Lorenz asked, having been sitting in a chair since the moment one was there for him to sit in. “I feel there is zero reason for my presence to be required here.”

“Sure, you can go,” Leonie said to him with a smug smile, “but don’t expect to get any credit for helping today. Doing the bare minimum isn’t doing enough.”

“Excuse me? I purchased everything that was in that truck! All of these chairs and tables are property of the Gloucester family, and you will credit me for that!” His angered voice bounced against the walls as he got to his feet, trying to storm towards Leonie, but she stared blankly back at him and he withdrew, not wanting to start more of a confrontation with someone he knew he couldn’t take in a fight. “Very well. Make note that I at least contributed in some manner.”

“Geez, why are you so loud out here?” Lysithea came out of the kitchen with a plate of baked pastries, Marianne following behind with another of the same. “I thought you were making this place operational, not starting a fight club.”

Raphael took in a long, deep breath, inhaling the scent of the pastries as deeply as he could while trying not to look too ravenous. “Those smell delicious, Lysithea!” he announced, rubbing at his stomach with a hand that still showed marks from some of the furniture he’d had to lift. “Mind if I have one? I think my stomach’s about to start chewing itself open.”

“Go ahead, these will definitely be on the menu if they taste good, so having people try them is kind of needed.” She couldn’t even set the plate down before he’d taken one, and by the time the plate was on a table it was half-empty, just about everyone having grabbed something. Within two minutes everything was gone, seconds and thirds long since claimed and eaten, the general consensus being that they were delicious and were worth selling, provided that they weren’t too expensive to make; Lysithea was adamant that they were relatively cheap to produce, especially if name-brand ingredients could be substituted for ones a little less trustworthy.

“Don’t take this wrong,” Claude said, finishing off his second pastry and resisting the temptation to rib the closest person to him who’d grabbed a third, “but I’m pretty sure you could make those with sawdust and glue and they’d still be delicious. Are you a culinary student or something?”

Lysithea’s face grew red as she turned her head so that she wasn’t facing the crowd. “N-no, I’ve just done some baking on the side since I was young. Thanks for the vote of confidence though, I very much appreciate it.” He winked at her, just as she was looking back over in his direction, which caused her to let out a shriek and duck back into the kitchen, yelling something about the flattery, while Marianne grabbed the now-empty plates and followed her back without a word.

“Are you sure you’re not here to pick up girls?” Leonie asked him, having watched what just went down. “Because that looked like a textbook attempt to pick someone up.”

“No harm in being friendly, I wouldn’t think.” Stretching his aching shoulders and knowing that he was going to be in pain come morning, Claude began to shuffle his way towards the door. “And with that, I’m calling it a day. Same time tomorrow morning, I assume?” No one had an answer for him, but he could see everyone else starting to follow him out (minus the two who’d gone into the kitchen), so he figured that he was being the leader and they were all bravely following him, despite him having no clue what was going on.

When he got around the building to where he’d parked his motorcycle, he saw it laying on its side with a blue-haired man standing over it, looking down on it with a hanging jaw and his phone in his hand. Stunned at what he was seeing, Claude cleared his throat to get the man’s attention, but someone who’d just followed him around the building did the job better than he could. “Caspar, I thought I told you to meet me out front!” Hilda screeched, cupping her cheeks as she ran towards the man, narrowly avoiding tripping over the fallen motorcycle. “What are you doing back here?”

“Looking for your car, since I know you didn’t walk over here. I, er, didn’t mean to knock this bike down when I passed it.” Caspar, as he’d been called, looked up from the scene he’d caused to see Claude standing there, eyes as open as they could be in disbelief as he looked at the damage he could see from above. “Guessing this is yours? Sorry, dude.”

“It’s whatever,” Claude replied, forcing the words out with a faked smile. “It needed to go to the shop to get repairs anyway, we’ll just add this in on the bill.”

“You wouldn’t have broken Claude’s bike if you’d listened to me in the first place.” Playfully stomping her foot onto the asphalt beneath them, Hilda seemed to be performatively angry at the man, but when he opened his arms for her she ran right into them, peppering his face with kisses. “I’m so glad you came over here to pick me up, though, I’m so tired of having to drive myself everywhere!”

As adorable as their display was supposed to have been, Claude was not enjoying it and he made that very clear by picking his bike up, seeing the long scratches on the side that hadn’t been there earlier in the day, and turning it on without any regard to who was standing nearby. He jumped on and sped out of the parking lot, narrowly missing the moving truck as it was pulling off from in front of the building, and despite whoever was driving it honking at him, he continued on his way without a care. He hadn’t been lying when he said he needed to take it into the shop—it related right back to why he was in the class in the first place, as luck would have it—but he knew that it was going to be a thorn in his side getting it repaired on the limited budget he currently had.

Instead of going straight to his apartment, he headed back onto campus and went to the building he’d gone to earlier in the day, seeing many more vehicles outside than had been there before. “Great, now Hanneman’s going to be here and I’ll be able to discuss everything with him,” he said to himself as he repeated the routine from before, starting with parking the bike out front and ending with him knocking on the office door a minute later. This time, instead of being met with silence, he received a muffled answer, permission to open the door, and he took in a deep breath before doing so.

“Ah, yes, are you here to discuss your terms of enrollment?” Professor Hanneman asked, giving Claude a glance up from the book he was reading. “I know that you were here earlier, Manuela was kind enough to give me your description when I spoke with her, but all I came in to was a bill from your class. Where is, ahem, the documentation we need to discuss?”

Claude’s mouth scrunched from side to side as he thought about how to answer the question, taking the seat across from Hanneman’s with zero hesitation. “Not in Garreg Mach, that’s all I can tell you. I’m taking your class and paying for repairing my bike after you ran into it, isn’t that enough for you?”

“And now with this bill for termite control, the scales are once again tipped against you, so I would say it is not. I need those papers, Claude, or unfortunately I will have to go to the headmaster and dean to discuss the legality of you being a student here.” Hanneman set his book down and gave Claude a stern look, which he met with an unflinching one of his own. “This class will go on with or without you, but if you want to remain a citizen—”

“Don’t hold my _citizenship_ against me here!” Bringing his hands to the sides of his head, fingers massaging his temples as he thought about how boneheaded that argument was, Claude’s look did not waver despite his frustration. “I’m asking you, what else is there you want from me? I don’t have much else.”

“You are well aware of what else you have, and yet you continue to refuse providing me with it, always claiming that the papers are not here. The choice is yours.” The smile that appeared on Hanneman’s face was very smug, which only irritated Claude further, but he knew that he was up against a wall. “Anyway, you know where my office is, you can bring them by any chance you get.”

Standing back up and keeping his face as still as he could, Claude said, “Sure do, you’ll see me around again, that’s for sure,” and he was walking out of the office, stopping in the doorway and reaching into his pocket before he walked further. “I’ll just leave this here, while I’m at it, as a reminder of what you owe me.” He pulled his hand out and threw a wadded-up ball of papers behind him, having it land squarely in the open book Hanneman had been reading.

His irritation had mostly subsided by the time he was back out to his bike, only for it to resurface once he saw the scratches Caspar had inflicted on the motorcycle. “Of course, if it’s not one thing here it’s another,” he grumbled, jumping on the bike and heading home, ignoring the sound of his phone blaring in his pocket as he rode. There was an inkling in his mind of who was possibly trying to call him, and he did not want to have a continuation of that conversation anytime soon.

There was quite the story about the history between Claude and Hanneman, starting with when the professor had initially ran into his bike with his car and crumpled several crucial parts of it; he’d been convinced to pretend like it was his own fault to save the professor from legal action, which wasn’t too problematic when the repairs weren’t expected to be too expensive. But that was just the tip of the iceberg, because no sooner had Claude given him his insurance information had Hanneman noticed something rather peculiar about something on it and had demanded to know more, lest he let the head of the college know a key fact about Claude von Riegan that he’d successfully kept under wraps his entire college career thus far.

He hadn’t been lying when he’d said that he was taking Practical Business to clear a debt he owed to the professor—but he certainly hadn’t told the whole truth. His debt was in keeping a major secret out from everyone’s ears, and it was one that he didn’t want to have go into collections if he could help it.

When he got back to his apartment and got his bike into its nightly resting spot, he went inside and collapsed on his bed, finally pulling his phone out to see several missed calls from Hanneman’s number, all of which he ignored without a second thought. He also noticed a message from a number he wasn’t familiar with, asking him to dress professionally when he went into the store the next day, and he could only assume that was one of his classmates trying to prepare him for a day running the shop.

“Almost makes me wish he’d just tell everyone what he knows,” Claude said after reading the message over a few times. “I’d get out of this mess and be able to go home with my bike mostly intact and my sanity fully together. But life’s not fair, is it?” He threw his arms back and took in a deep breath, not sure what else there was that he could say or do to save himself from what was going on around him. This school year was going to be the death of him, of that he was certain.

* * *

The next morning they all gathered inside the Golden Perk, which was still relatively barren of anything giving it personality, although the new tables, chairs, and booth seats nestled in two corners definitely gave it a new lease on life. “We’re opening in exactly one week,” Leonie excitedly told everyone once they were all gathered, feeling like she was the manager of the place and therefore was the one designated to share that sort of news. “It’s been tricky to work out the logistics of that, but I think we can be skilled coffee-slingers by that time. What say you all?”

“I’m not doing any drinks, my place is the baked goods,” Lysithea reminded her, her hands sporting gloves that were caked in powder. “Marianne too, she’s my assistant.” To prove the point, Marianne gave a small, silent nod and a smile in Leonie’s direction, and the orange-haired woman stared at them both before nodding in return. “Now can we get back to work? We’re working on perfecting a crumble cake for when we do open.”

“Crumble cake sounds like it’ll be a best-seller,” said Hilda, her eyes watching as the pair went back to the kitchen without actually being told they could. “It’ll need some cute name, of course, but we’ll be able to sell a million of them if they’re as good as those pastries were yesterday. And since the only work in selling them will be plating them or whatever, I think I can handle that.”

“You’ll also be able to handle making drinks, and that’s final.” Punching a fist into her other, open hand, Leonie’s look of determination was one that couldn’t be argued with, no matter how much anyone wanted to. She was really taking running the place seriously, which was fine if no one else wanted to do it. “I’ll pull up some tutorial videos for how to make the drinks. Raphael, Ignatz, and I spent a while last night finding the ones we want for our menu and they’re going to be delicious.”

Claude, noticing very quickly that he was one of the people being talked to about needing training and not wanting to be the one to pick a fight about it, took a seat at one of the tables and waited for further direction. When Lorenz sat down next to him with a grimace on his snooty face, he expected to hear the worst griping he’d ever be blessed with listening to, but Lorenz’s mouth stayed shut even as everyone else crowded around the table. “This is going to be so good,” Raphael said, humming to himself as he stood behind everyone sitting down, able to easily see over them as Leonie set her phone and its videos on the table in front of them. “When I saw these drinks last night, I couldn’t believe that we’re gonna be making those for people in town. But we are!”

“That’s right, we sure are, and we’re going to be the best team to ever run this shop. Professor Hanneman is going to regret having to replace us next year!” Leonie pressed play on the first video and stepped around so that she could see it as well, and together the six people there were introduced to the world of coffee-making, starting with the brewing and the perking and ending with the ingredient-adding and design-creating. There were so many different tricks and tips that were thrown at them in the recipe tutorials that no one fully grasped the entire task they were being given, but the gist was received by the majority of them by the time they’d gone through the playlist.

The moment the last video finished, Leonie was jumping back behind the counter to pull out all of the machines they’d need for the job, while Ignatz began talking to everyone (but mostly Hilda) about his design plans he’d come up with. “It’s going to be a deer theme, something about the idea of ‘golden deer’ has been sticking with me and I just can’t shake it. If you have any contributions to that theme, I’ll gladly accept them.”

A chill went down Claude’s spine when he heard Ignatz say his idea, but he made sure to keep his frigid reaction to himself. He wasn’t sure what it was about that suggestion that he didn’t care for, but as everyone else started to voice their agreement, he decided to swallow down any bad feelings and try to be as supportive as the rest of them. “We could put antlers up over the door, make it a hunting deal,” he threw out into the din, everyone shutting their mouths to listen to what he had to say. “Or we could skip the hunting thing and just do horns everywhere. There’s a lot of potential here.”

“I agree, we can make use of this idea without too much hassle,” Lorenz didn’t sound pleased with it either, but the fact that he was down for it was a good sign that it would go through. “I assume that I will be the one financing this as well?”

Surprised by the fact that his idea had been accepted, Ignatz meekly nodded. “I-if you don’t mind it, I’m sure if we go the antlers-only route—although the idea of hunting busts is clever, Claude—it won’t be too expensive.” He bowed his head in Lorenz’s direction as the purple-haired man sighed and pulled out his phone to start checking his account. “We can get this ready for opening day if you’re paying for it.”

“All right, we’re getting things in motion!” Clasping her hands excitedly as she leaned over on the espresso machine she’d procured, Leonie’s smile was easily the brightest thing in the room at the moment, even brighter than the screen of Lorenz’s phone and the lights above their heads. “You two, go out and get shopping for the décor. The rest of us, we’re making drinks until we can’t make drinks anymore.”

Her excitement was not contagious, not even for the two who’d been told to leave and escape the practice session. The pair in the kitchen were exempt from making the drinks, if only because they were providing baked goods for them to snack on while they tested the drinks they’d only just learned the recipes for, but that still meant four people standing around an espresso machine, a bottom-brewing coffee maker, and a couple of blenders, almost exclusively making drinks that tasted like they’d been sitting in the fridge for weeks before they drank them. By the time Ignatz and Lorenz came back from their shopping trip hours later, only Hilda had managed to make one drink that was decent enough to be replicated, and she was not thrilled with having the title of barista thrown onto her shoulders.

“I’m not working here to make drinks,” she asserted, eyeing the piles of fake antlers that had been carted into the shop. “I’m here to look cute, talk to customers to get them to buy more, and help decorate. This is not what I signed up for when I took this class.”

“Uh, yeah, it kind of is,” Raphael corrected, earning a glare from Hilda as she did not appreciate his comment. “I mean, why else did you sign up for the class?”

She huffed, “To get placed in the jewelry shop Professor Hanneman has students run, duh. I told everyone this when we first met.” The way she let her bottom lip jut out to make herself look more pitiful was slightly hilarious to see as an outsider to the conversation, but it was not doing her any favors, especially not when she chose to flounce her way out and over to the antler pile.

Raphael looked at Claude and Leonie with a confused expression prominent on his face, as if he didn’t fully understand why what had just happened went like it did. “Don’t worry about her, if she doesn’t want to help then that’s her grade that suffers, not ours,” Leonie said to him, while Claude turned his attention to the scribbled-down recipe that they’d been trying to follow. She noticed that he was getting back to figuring out why they weren’t being successful in their drink preparation and nodded, joining him at once, and so the practicing continued for a little while longer, as the shop around them began to take its final form.

Even with all of their work that day, the Golden Perk wasn’t fully ready to be opened until right before they unlocked their doors for business on their first day of business. But the place had changed dramatically from their first meeting to the first shift, and it was something to be respected and admired at that point, all of the elbow grease and extra time spent getting everything in order paying off when they had their first customers entering the building within minutes of the yellow-neon open sign in the window being flicked on. Ever the self-proclaimed manager of the business, Leonie took it upon herself to greet everyone at the door with a smile and a direction to head up to the register, where Claude was leaning on the counter, ready to take orders and hand them off to anyone with free hands. For the first day everyone was present, but they had drafted a schedule that would go into effect starting day two.

To call the employees of the shop a well-oiled machine that first day would have been grossly incorrect, as there was much disconnect between them all as workers despite how much they’d already put into the store. Claude found quickly that he couldn’t hand drink orders to anyone but Raphael or Hilda (or else they’d never get done), and orders for some of the baked goods had to touch Ignatz’s hand (or else it would never be brought out). Lorenz was doing nothing except giving judgmental glares at anyone who dared to approach the counter, and the snappish comments he’d make if Claude’s order found its way into his grasp made giving him anything just not worth it.

Back in the kitchen, Lysithea and Marianne were keeping up well enough with the orders to start, but as the shift went on they found that their pace wasn’t quite fast enough to get everyone what they wanted in a reasonable amount of time. It ultimately ended in Lysithea demanding someone go out and get her more pans for baking, so that she could make more at once, and Lorenz was more than eager to volunteer himself for that job. Him being gone meant just a bit more space available behind the counter, as everyone else hustled and bustled to get the waves of orders taken care of. At one point, around lunchtime, Leonie gave up her post at the door to jump behind the counter and help make drinks, because Hilda had given up and allotted herself a bit of a break time, that conveniently happened when Caspar and his friends came in, so that she could sit at his table with him and chat instead of work.

The work was long and surprisingly difficult, but as the afternoon wound down, so did the flow of business, and they were able to finally catch their breath. There’d been so little time for conversation between one another that it was during that lull that Leonie started talking to everyone about how they felt things were going. She’d picked the ladies in the kitchen to talk to first, which meant she wasn’t focused on what was happening up in the front of the store for a few minutes.

“I’m going to tell her when she gets back up here that she’s steering a sinking ship,” Claude told himself with a chuckle, looking at the screen on the register he’d been incredibly familiar with all morning and seeing his sweat-covered reflection in its screen. “I don’t see any of us making it to the end of the year if that’s what we’re working with.” He glanced up right as the front door opened, and a slender woman walked in, her arms full of textbooks that looked to be on the verge of slipping. Without thinking too much about where he was and how he should be acting, he hoist himself over the countertop and rushed to help her, bending down in front of her stack of books and offering an arm. “Looks like you’re about to lose some of your light reading materials.”

“Funny, but thank you,” she said, not looking at whoever was helping her due to the size of what she was holding. “I’ll take the closest table, if you can help me there.” Together they were able to get her and her books to a low table right by the door, and the moment Claude pulled his hand away the entire pile fell with many thuds onto the wooden surface, him cringing at what he’d seemed to have caused before realizing that he needed to be back in his position. The woman didn’t even look in his direction when she could have, until he was back behind the counter and staring at her with a smile. “Oh, you work here. I didn’t realize you weren’t just some kind gentleman.”

“Sorry about that,” he apologized, keeping his smile on his lips as she turned towards him and he saw how cute she was. He might not have had any interest in his coworkers, but customers were fair game. “What can I get for you to drink? Or eat, either’s an option.”

“Just a cup of water for now, thanks.” As she approached the counter she was patting down the pockets of her casual dress pants, looking concerned. “I’ll have to run back to the office to get my wallet if I want anything else, seems I forgot it.”

Claude punched in the order for a cup of water and watched as the ticket printed, no cost but a drink still needing to be made. “If you need to, I can watch your stuff, bet you’re just right down the road with how much you were carrying,” he said, as he handed the ticket to Hilda, her rolling her eyes until she saw how simple the request was. “Do you want to do that now, or later?”

“I’m not up for going back on campus quite yet,” the woman replied, her voice flat as she waited to get her cup of water, Claude’s eyes narrowing as he tried to make sense of what that meant. After Hilda handed her the drink with a forced grin, the woman gave Claude a thankful nod and went back to her table, setting the drink on the edge as she began reorganizing the pile of books she’d brought with her.

He couldn’t take his eyes off of her as she worked, getting the books into some semblance of an organized stack before she pulled out a journal from inside the lone binder she had with her and began writing in it. There was something about this woman that he wasn’t sure of, and he wanted answers. Before he could leave his post again to talk to her, Leonie came out of the kitchen and motioned for him to follow her, which he did with his eyes constantly flickering over to the woman at her table. “How would you say today went? Someone has to let Hanneman know how things are going and I figured as acting manager that I’d do it today, so no one else has to.”

“It went fine.” His entire rehearsed response to that question had evaporated into thin air, the mysterious woman taking too much of his focus for him to be able to think about how rough the day had actually been. Leonie, noticing that Claude’s attention was elsewhere, turned her head to see where his eyes were focusing, and when she saw the woman she was right back to looking at him, displeasure in her gaze. “W-what’s that look for, Leonie? Just because I’m not ordering off the menu doesn’t mean I can’t browse, does it?”

“Sure it doesn’t, but that’s not the problem here. Do you know who that is?”

It was a question that Claude was not prepared to hear, and his answer proved it. “Our newest regular, some book-loving lady from the college?”

“She’s not just ‘some lady’, Claude, she’s Byleth Eisner, the daughter of former freelancer supreme Jeralt Eisner and one of the newest professors at the College of Arts and Education here in Garreg Mach. How do you not know who she is?” Just to check herself, Leonie gave the woman a second look, and confident in her read on who she was she gently punched Claude’s shoulder. “You don’t mess with her, she’s not like her father but she could still destroy you in one word.”

“I don’t think she’s going to need any words to destroy me, if we’re being honest,” Claude said with a sly smile, earning another punch from Leonie’s dagger-like fist. “Okay, okay, I’ll leave her alone, if only because you seem to have a thing for her father and I don’t want to become your stepson-in-law.”

Her face becoming bright red, Leonie sputtered, “Her dad’s dead, Claude. He was my mentor before he passed.”

Having completely misunderstood why Leonie was so passionate there, Claude felt bad, but what was done was done and he couldn’t take back his words. “Sorry about that, didn’t have any idea he had that role to you. I’ll leave Byleth alone for you, though, promise.”

“I didn’t say you have to leave her alone, I just said don’t mess with her.” Winking, Leonie backed away from him and started back towards the kitchen. “I’m going to be talking about today with everyone else now, don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

He gave her two thumbs up as she walked away, and now without her distracting him he was able to slip back to his other distraction and headed right over to Byleth’s table, where she had propped open one of her textbooks and was writing notes from it. “So, uh, heard from a friend that you’re a new professor here? How’d you manage that?”

“Not really sure, I was student teaching at a different school last year and then the headmaster personally invited me to teach here.” Not looking up from her note-taking, Byleth continued, “Why are you asking me this? Interested in taking one of my classes?”

“Can’t really say that I am,” Claude replied after actually looking at the books and seeing that they were all on different theories of writing and literature. “Never was a reading sort of guy, my degree’s in public speaking and how to command large groups.”

“And yet you work in a coffee shop?” Byleth asked, finally looking up from the notebook to see Claude drawing a chair next to her. “How interesting. Those degrees really don’t take you anywhere, do they?”

He couldn’t help but laugh at her dry humor and the way she asked her questions so flatly, as if they meant nothing to her at all. “I’ll be finishing it next year, this is the last class I’ve got to take for it.” Cue Byleth looking at him with uncertainty, and he realized that she was a new professor and wouldn’t be familiar with the horrors of the class known as Practical Business. “I work here for a business course. Not my choice, the professor who runs it wanted me and pulled some strings to get it to count as my big, daunting senior seminar, but I’d rather be working in here than sitting in a stuffy classroom all day.”

“I can understand that, my formal education happened outside of classrooms as well.” Now that she was clued in to why this man was where he was (although it didn’t explain why he was sitting right next to her), she went back to focusing on her notes. “I have a lot of work to do, getting prepared for my class tomorrow, so if you don’t mind, I would like to be left alone now. Thank you.”

The politeness was appreciated, but being told to leave was not, although Claude did it without a hint of considering any other options. “I’ll leave you to it, Professor Eisner,” he told her as he got to his feet, seeing her whole body stiffen up at the title. “Feel free to take me up on my offer, though. I’ll watch your stuff if you want more than some water.”

She didn’t reply, but he didn’t expect her to when she was already engrossed in whatever she was taking notes about. Slightly defeated, but incredibly curious to know more about this woman, Claude went back behind the counter and took his position at the register just in time for another customer to come in, and for a while he was able to get back into the working mindset. However, every time the place cleared out and he could stare over at Byleth and her mountain of work, he had to resist trying to make his move with her again. It was bizarre, he’d come into Practical Business expecting it to be nothing but work and paying off the favor of being enrolled without papers stating his citizenship in Fódlan or elsewhere, and now he was focused on one blue-haired professor who seemed friendly enough, but too busy to talk too much.

How he hoped that the next time their paths crossed, it would be with less books in between his hand and her heart.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: death mention, somewhat risque content (nothing nsfw)

For the first few weeks of operation, the Golden Perk was running as smoothly as any of them expected it to, which was welcome news given the ragtag bunch in charge of it. For being bossy at times, Leonie did make for a sympathetic and understanding manager, and whenever someone would mess up an order she’d make it right without hesitation, knowing that what mattered most was return business, not the occasional day where they spent a bit too much on replacing items. The baked goods were always selling out faster than they could be made, which Lysithea and Marianne were both happy about, although it was only ever the former who would take credit for the recipes and the creation of the treats. Even the front counter bunch was handling the work well, minus their occasional slip-ups and mistakes, but for all of the smooth sailing they were experiencing, they knew that there were going to be rough seas ahead.

The first instance of something going wrong was Lorenz not showing up for scheduled shifts, only coming in after Leonie would call him and badger him into coming in. He rarely did the work he was expected to do, even when he’d been coming in regularly, so him missing was not as big of a detriment to the overall team as it could have been, but he was so insistent on getting his credit for the class that it felt odd he wasn’t coming in at all. By the time a month had passed from his first unexcused missed shift, he wasn’t even coming when Leonie would call him, and she was one shift away from going to Professor Hanneman about it.

That was unnecessary, though, as Hanneman came in on them instead the very next day to find the rogue student missing, brushed it off, and asked if he could borrow Claude for some amount of time. Knowing what it was most likely about, Claude tried to duck into the kitchen to hide from being taken, but he was defeated by Leonie pulling him out and presenting him to Hanneman, who gave a solemn nod at seeing him. “Thanks for that, I’ll remember this,” he whispered to her before heading around the counter to join Hanneman outside the shop, the cooler air around them almost requiring a jacket. “So, what do you need me for today?”

“Ah, I was just checking to make sure you were still attending, nothing more,” Hanneman replied, crossing his arms over his chest to rub his hands up and down on his arms in an attempt to combat the chill that morning. “I cannot find myself being too bothered about anyone else dropping the class mid-semester, but if you were to suddenly disappear you know that your continued enrollment would be in jeopardy.”

“Trust me, it’s not something I could easily forget.” In fact, since the day that they’d had their rather heated conversation Claude hadn’t forgotten for a second that one mistake would have him being handed a one-way ticket out of Garreg Mach, because of all the people he owed favors to, it had to be a professor like Hanneman. “I promise you I’ll be here through the whole year, then my debt to you will be paid, won’t it?”

Pursing his lips together, Hanneman took a moment before nodding in agreement. “I suppose then it will be, I’ll have received enough tuition to pay you back and you’ll have had to stay around to receive my refund. It all works out if you’re here through the year.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know that’s the terms of what’s going on,” Claude muttered, before stretching his arms over his head and arching his back as deeply as he could manage. “I’m going to head back in now, since you know I’m still working here, and working requires me being inside where I can…work.”

“Of course, sorry for taking up your time.” For a single moment Hanneman looked like he was genuine with his apology, but he moved right past it without so much as a farewell, heading into his old-timey car that was illegally parked in the street and driving back towards his office on campus. Claude, by that point back inside the building, grumbled something about hating being kept hostage in a situation caused by that exact car before going behind the counter to get back to the work he tolerated decently well.

“You talk to him about Lorenz at all?” Raphael asked from the sink, where he was washing dishes as quickly as he could, passing them off to Ignatz who was drying and orderly stacking them. When Claude said he didn’t, he seemed upset but shrugged it off right away. “Oh well, if he doesn’t come back then we’ll just make sure we put he bailed out on us on his review. That’s what Leonie says we’ve got to do when people don’t show up.”

Standing with her elbows propped up on the register, punching in numbers with the pressure she was putting down on it, Hilda gave a long, drawn-out sigh. “I really hope it’s just him that stops showing up, we’re _so_ much better off without his annoying personality here. That, and he wasn’t doing enough work to make me have to do more work to make up for him not being here.”

“Heh, yeah, you’re in luck because I don’t intend on leaving this until the class is done, and I think everyone else is in the same boat,” Claude laughed, knowing on the inside he was saying that only because he had to, not because he really wanted to be there. “We’re all going to go down together, if we go down at all, but I highly doubt that certain people are going to let that happen.”  
He was, of course, referring to Leonie and the duo in charge of baked goods, who could run the shop just the three of them if it came down to it, although Leonie had made it overtly clear that she wanted the whole team to stick around. “I know I wanted to do something more, like, in tune with what my goal in life is,” Hilda said after giving Claude’s words some thought, “but I think that if I had to be forced into working a customer service job that isn’t retail, I got placed with probably the best people to have to be put with. I don’t know if I’d be able to tolerate this work if I didn’t have you all here with me.”

“That’s probably the nicest thing you’ll say to any of us,” he remarked, glancing towards Raphael and Ignatz to see how they took the slight praise, which was with two big smiles. “I think I speak for all of us when I say that having you here makes this place a bit less boring.”

“Definitely!” Raphael’s response was loud, and drowned out whatever it was that Ignatz said at the same time, and with the four of them having come to that agreement they were able to power through the next hour of their shift without any complaints or struggles that weren’t directly related to malfunctioning machines and a lack of baked goods to hand off to waiting customers, but that was a short-lived time of peace.

That was, of course, because Byleth walked in and took her seat at her usual table with her books piled high in front of her, and Claude’s entire attention span went from getting through work to watching her every breath. Noticing that he was managing to do less work than even she was, Hilda gave a small gesture in the direction of Byleth’s table, almost like a dismissive wave. “I know you want to give her table service, so go ahead and do it. Leonie’s not here right now, she’s not going to stop you, and I think we can say we’ve got things under control at the moment.”

He nodded, knowing that if Hilda was advocating for him to slack off, he was going to have to let her do the same in the future, and soon enough he was on the other side of the counter, approaching Byleth and her books with a glass of ice water in his hand. “Hey, figured you might want this,” he said as he set the cup down on the table, before drawing the other chair to sit for himself. “You’re looking a bit stressed. School year getting you down?”

“You could say something like that, sure.” Her reply was short, matching her almost emotionless expression as she was skimming over the words on the page of her current book. “I had a bit of an incident with an online assignment and now the students are a week ahead of where I planned for them to be. Not exactly a good look, but the headmaster said I needed to go along with it, even if the dean gave me quite the scolding over it.”

Confused, as Byleth was opening up to him like he was a colleague rather than a student who happened to be working at the coffee shop she came into just about every day, Claude realized that he needed to play along with her before she noticed what she was doing. “Yeah, I can’t imagine that being a fun situation to be stuck in, but I’m glad there’s no trouble with it. Headmaster Rhea is a rather understanding woman when you actually get to talking to her.” He only knew _that_ because she was aware of his current status as a student and all of its intricacies, things that Professor Hanneman had found out about and thought he could be using as leverage against him—things that he was allowing to be used against him, really. “I hope the class is taking it well, they must think they’re getting done a week early.”

“Oh, no, Seteth made sure to tell me that they don’t get to stop class early because of my mistake, but I’ll make it work. I just…” She trailed off as her eyes lifted from the page of her book, meeting a group of young men entering the coffee shop and her face going red at the sight of them. “That’s them right there,” she sputtered, trying to bury herself in her books, and it was then that Claude understood the reason for her being so open with him (or so he thought): she was trying to get him to act as a barrier between her and the students.

“Seem like a nice bunch,” he grumbled, his usually go-lucky attitude souring when he recognized a couple of them, specifically the rich son of a nearby principality’s ruler and his closest friend, as well as the party boy whose room was a few down from his in the apartment building (which he assumed most people treated like a typical college dorm). “I’ll take care of them, if you’d like?”

“Don’t waste your breath on them, they should be…well, actually, _we_ should all be in class here shortly, I guess I didn’t realize I was cutting it so close to class time, and that they were going to be coming here of all the places in Garreg Mach.” Closing her book, Byleth swallowed her water down in two large sips before handing the empty cup back to Claude. “Thanks for sitting with me for the couple minutes I had. Maybe next time you’ll be wearing a nametag so I can thank you by name.”

Since his attention had snapped back to her when she’d finished her drink, he was staring awkwardly at the cup he was now holding, while she was gathering her things. “I, er, my name is Claude, if that really means anything,” he said, knowing for a fact she’d heard it be yelled at him before on one of the other occasions she’d been in and he’d come to speak to her. “And your name is Byleth, but I should be calling you Professor Eisner, out of respect.”

“Calling me Byleth’s perfectly fine, you’ve done enough to help me out since I started coming here that I think we can be on a first-name basis,” she said, completely earnest in her words even with their flat delivery. “I’ll be seeing you here tomorrow, correct, Claude?”

“No place I’d rather be.” He smiled at her and she gave him nothing in return, scooping all of her books up and heading out the door as fast as she could go, leaving him with the empty cup in his hands and a longing in his chest he’d been unprepared for.

The second instance of something going wrong came halfway through the Red Wolf Moon, when Claude showed up for yet another mentally unstimulating day of work at the coffee shop and found the door to the building locked. He knew that something was amiss from the moment he tugged on the front door and it wasn’t swinging open, yet he could definitely see Lysithea and Marianne both flittering around inside through the windows; he banged his hand on the glass until he caught their attention, and then when Marianne came to be his savior from the chilly morning he asked her what the holdup was. “Oh, er, I…don’t know if I should be the one to tell you this,” she quietly said, averting her gaze so their eyes didn’t meet. “It shouldn’t happen again.”

“What shouldn’t happen?” he asked, looking for an actual answer, but she was already going back towards the bakery, Lysithea looking at him from its doorway with a solemn scowl on her face, and when they both disappeared without a further word he knew he’d be waiting for that clarification. The problem was, that clarification never quite came, not even when customers started coming inside and he was left totally alone at the register, making all the drinks and ringing in all of the orders on his own.

When he had a moment to make a break for the schedule he did so, leaving the counter totally unstaffed for the ten seconds it took him to duck into the back and see who had been scheduled to work with him that day. Seeing that it was Ignatz and Raphael, a wave of worry overcame Claude’s entire body, because they were two of the most dedicated to working there at the shop—meaning that if they were both gone from the shift, something had to have happened to keep them from being there. Now with the worry that they were in trouble clouding his mind, he went back to the counter and continued pulling triple duty until Leonie came in to see him floundering at doing the work of three men on his own, and despite her role as manager she stepped right in and helped him until the shop was cleared of waiting customers looking for their order.

“I thought Hilda was going to come in to help out for a bit, sorry about that,” she apologized after they both had a chance to catch their breath from the rush, her nowhere near as worn out as Claude was but still quite frazzled. “I had an in-person seminar this morning I couldn’t miss, otherwise I would’ve been here sooner.”

Claude, breathing heavily with his hand held over his chest to feel the rapid-fire beating of his chest, his body feeling like he’d ran a marathon in the hours he’d been working alone, looked at Leonie and saw her expression was just as grave as Lysithea and Marianne’s both had been when he’d arrived. “What is going on here that I’m clearly out of the loop with?” he questioned, hoping that if anyone would give him the answer, it would be Leonie. “Come on, I missed out on getting to chat with Byleth for a moment because I was running around like a madman back here.”

“Raphael called me this morning to tell me there’d been a fire at his parents’ hotel overnight and he and Ignatz were already on their way to take care of things there. I told Lysithea somewhat about this so she knew to let you in this morning, but I also asked Hilda if she could come in to support and clearly that didn’t happen.” Leonie’s voice was remaining rather steady, although she looked to be on the verge of breaking down. “I just…I felt so bad hearing Raphael _crying_ about this when he called me that I didn’t think to tell anyone else the details when I was calling them.”

Just imagining the sound of Raphael crying put a knot in Claude’s throat that he couldn’t quite swallow away, and he didn’t want to press further than he already had. He somewhat felt selfish for thinking about how his extra work had cost him a chance to talk to the woman he’d been blatantly flirting with for months, when he was doing that extra work to cover for two people who’d seemed to have experienced some great tragedy, but he wasn’t going to vocalize those feelings. “I’ll be in tomorrow then, so that Hilda doesn’t have the same struggle I had today,” he declared, letting that be his way of telling Leonie that he understood the severity of what was going on.

She nodded, thankful of his generosity, and without thinking much of it he reached out and wrapped his arms around her in a hug, hoping a comforting embrace would be enough to patch some of the aching in her heart. He’d definitely have thought twice about doing it if he’d seen that people were approaching the door, and so when the group of boys that Byleth had once noted were some of her students came in and saw Claude hugging Leonie, he could hear them chuckling and making comments among themselves about the sight.

When Ignatz came back a couple of days later, he did so without Raphael, and he refused to say much about what had happened. “The plan is to use the insurance money to rebuild, since that place meant so much to us all,” he did tell Leonie in a hushed whisper, which Claude only happened to overhear because the shop was silent enough at the moment that one could have heard a pin drop. “It’ll be years before it’s fully back to how it was, but…who knows if it’ll actually get back to that point.”

“You’ll do the right thing by the place, all three of you,” Leonie replied to him, which interested Claude to hear, but since he knew the conversation wasn’t meant for him he wasn’t going to try digging for an explanation for what she meant. He just went right back to scrubbing tables and rearranging them, shifting up how the place looked so that customers wouldn’t feel that their décor was getting stale.

That overheard conversation lingered in his mind for most of the shift, until he saw Byleth come inside and his thoughts went straight to how he was going to socialize with her that day; it was the first time since the mostly solo shift that she’d come in and he knew he needed to talk to her. She took a seat at her usual table, with half the load of books she typically carried with her, and he jumped behind the counter to grab her a cup of water as she was settling in. “Good to see you once again,” he greeted, setting the cup on the edge of the table and pushing it closer to her with his fingertips, her ignoring it completely. “Sorry about last time, couldn’t get away from the register long enough to specially deliver you your drink, but I’m sure you saw how frantic I was.”

“Yes, I did,” she replied curtly, which chilled his blood in his veins. She reached over to take the water and moved it to the other side of the table, before waving for him to leave her alone. “Thanks for the drink, get back to work.”

“Uh, yeah, right on it!” His head bobbed as he spoke, but he was not feeling very enthusiastic as he trudged back over to the tables he was in the middle of cleaning. The conversation that Ignatz and Leonie had been having was over and they were both doing their own things, which meant that for the moment, he could stand there scrubbing tabletops and pining over more interaction with Byleth without anything to listen to. She seemed like she was deep in thought over something, a notebook open in front of her and her pen moving frantically across the page for lines at a time before she’d take a sip of her water. Whatever she was doing, it was important enough that he leave her alone for it, and despite his desire to spend time with her he knew he needed to respect that.

She was gone within minutes, leaving her half-empty cup on the table and a piece of paper folded neatly under it; when Leonie went to clean it up she stopped and looked at the paper with eyebrows furrowed before sighing and bringing it straight to Claude. “Note for you from a regular,” she said halfheartedly, knowing who was responsible for leaving it (but also clearly having other things on her mind). “Make sure that you’re not leaving _her_ ones of your own in return, at least while you’re working.”  
“Can do, thank you.” Taking the note, Claude could see that Byleth had clearly written out his name on the part she’d left on top, a partial water ring marking it from where she’d set the cup, and he tucked it into his pocket for later. Something told him that the contents were going to be the result of some mistake and he didn’t want to be in the Golden Perk when he read about her thoughts on the matter, so he made it a point to read the note when he got back to his apartment. “Say, Leonie, everything okay?” he asked, right as she was going back to what she’d been doing before, but the look of despair across her face told him he didn’t want the true answer at the moment.

The note ultimately was Byleth asking if she could get a plain black coffee the next time she came in, nothing more and nothing less, and that was enough to get Claude to begin to second guess what he’d thought had happened. After reading and throwing away the piece of paper, he decided he’d take a walk around his building, for no reason other than to stretch his legs inside where it was warm. Of course, when he walked by a room a few doors down and it came open as he passed, a couple of the boys he knew were Byleth’s students walking out, he felt like he had the opportunity to address what they’d seen with them.

But that…that wasn’t exactly appropriate, not when he’d been working and they were customers, he couldn’t bring anything up with them and have it get back to Hanneman that he was harassing customers. That mindset changed the moment he heard one of their phones go off with a shutter sound, and he turned to see the party boy, the one with the red hair that lived in that particular apartment, standing with his phone’s camera turned towards Claude. “Looks like you caught his attention,” his black-haired friend (who he didn’t recognize from coming into the shop that day) spat, giving the one with the phone a backhanded slap on the shoulder. “Great job.”

“Hey, I wasn’t trying to be stealthy, I was just trying to get a picture.” Claude knew that he should just let the whole thing go, but when the redhead spoke further his whole mindset changed. “I told the professor I know her little boyfriend from where I live and now I’ve got the proof, so maybe now—”

“What did you just call me?” The word boyfriend wasn’t one that had been used in a positive way there, but the fact that it had been used at all was what bothered Claude. “You better start explaining yourself, before I report you to the headmaster of the colleges about your behavior. I’d consider this stalking, perhaps?”

Another smack on the shoulder of the one still holding the phone with a smirk on his face, while the one doing the smacking grumbled, “Because what you need on your record is another note about stalking. Sylvain, stop trying to play match-breaker and get over it.”

“Match-breaker?” Claude repeated, deciding to step closer to the pair, while the third person in the group brought his hands to the sides of his head, mouthing something about the situation that came with no sound. “What match is there to break? Just completely curious about that.”

“Sylvain’s got a thing for the professor, and he thinks that she’s got one for you, so he’s set on breaking the two of you up.” Pursing his lips together after he’d finished speaking, the black-haired one looked at Sylvain, then at Claude before nodding. “That’s about it, really. Can’t say there’s actually anything going on, but he sure thinks there is.”

“I’ll have you know there isn’t, thank you very much, and if there was…” Trailing off as he wasn’t sure how he wanted to end that statement, Claude could see fear starting to form in the eyes of two of the three, the only one who wasn’t scared of what was going on being the one who was so open about explaining things. “Well, it doesn’t matter if there was anything going on, because that’s not the case. Now go ahead and delete that picture and go on with your day, because I’m going on with mine.”

No longer interested in going on his walk, Claude had to pass by the trio as he went back to his apartment, seeing their eyes all follow him until he was down at his front door. He could hear Sylvain being told to listen to what he’d been directed to do and they headed off wherever they’d been going in the first place, at about the same time he was unlocking his door and going inside. “I hope the next time I run into him,” he clearly heard Sylvain saying as he was closing the door, “you’re not here to stop me, Felix.” Whatever the response was, he didn’t hear it, as he was not going to get caught spying on their conversation and have that information be relayed to Byleth.

“Black coffee next time, huh,” he recalled from the note, his eyes tracking towards the trash can he’d thrown it into. “I’ll see what I can do about that.”

* * *

If having some of Byleth’s students committed to keeping him from their professor wasn’t bad enough, Claude was still having to go through the motions of working at the coffee shop if it meant getting to see her, but the world itself wasn’t making it easy for him to do that. It was three weeks before Raphael was back to work, and when he did return he wasn’t himself in the slightest, and his younger sister Maya was hanging around the shop each day using the internet to attend online classes, because her brother was now in charge of caring for her full-time.

What had pulled him away from work for so long was tragedy at its finest, that overnight fire claiming the lives of several guests at the hotel as well as the owners, and the only reason Maya had survived it was that she was spending the night with a friend that very night. To have gone from living thinking he was going to take over the family business when his parents retired to having to decide if rebuilding it and running it without their guidance was a good idea had changed Raphael entirely, his originally carefree demeanor turned into a very quiet and understated one. He worked hard and made sure that he was doing everything he could to focus on his job, but it became clear after a few days that he was immersing himself in work because he’d lost nearly everything that mattered most to him.

On one hand, Claude was grateful that he was working alongside someone who was so focused on the work he was assigned, but on the other he knew that this wasn’t the Raphael that had originally signed up for the class, and it made it hard to feel good about leaving him at the register to go talk to Byleth when she came in. But he couldn’t push aside all of his own wants and wishes for the well-being of someone he was working with, and so the next time that Byleth came in after Raphael’s return, he made sure that Raphael was in the middle of helping someone at the counter before he headed to the table Byleth was sitting at with a cup of black coffee, as he’d done every time since she’d made that request. She wasn’t sitting at her original table any longer, having chosen to sit in the booth nestled in the corner with the window at its side, her books and a clearly new laptop sitting on the table in front of her.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be so quick today,” Byleth flatly said as she saw him approaching. “Your friend at the counter’s back for the first time in a while. What’s been keeping him away from here?”

Rather than address that directly, Claude glanced over to where Maya was sitting, her own computer in front of her as she stared bored at whatever instruction she was receiving. “Not really my place to talk about that, sorry,” he apologized, before drawing in a sharp breath, noticing how Byleth was sitting to one side of the booth, giving him plenty of room to take a seat for himself. “I think you look rather comfortable over here today. Enjoying the change of location?”

“No, I’ll just be here for a while and figured sitting on this would be much more comfortable than in the other chair. I just…I have a lot of grading to get done, the classes started taking their final exams today.” She gestured toward the books she brought with her and Claude noticed they weren’t the usual books at all but rather a bunch of different ones, and the computer was obviously for inputting the grades. “I think once I’m done giving exams each day I’ll be here to work until you close.”

“I think we can accommodate that.” His response came with a smile, which was not met with one in return, although he could tell by the gracious shine in her eyes that she was thankful for his kindness. “Just let me know if you need anything else to drink while you’re working so hard, I’ll hook you up with that too.”

“Thank you very much, Claude, I’ll keep it in mind.” With that, Byleth was to her grading and he was walking back behind the counter without any idea if she was going to ask him for anything at all for the rest of the day. If she came up to the counter and struck up idle conversation with him as a distraction from what she needed to be doing, he wasn’t sure how he’d be able to handle it, but something told him that it’d be handled well enough.

She didn’t actually approach the counter that day, or even for the next couple, but when it was the shop’s last day open before the winter break taking them into the new year, about halfway through his shift Byleth was up at the counter with an empty coffee cup in one hand and a broken spirit evident in her face. “Give me something stronger, I’m on the last set of essays and I kind of want to wring the necks of the students who thought these were appropriate to turn in as a major part of their grades,” she joked, passing him the empty cup and expecting him to fill it back up for her. What he did instead was take it and put it in the sink, grabbing a larger one and filling it with the most caffeinated combination he could create with what he had behind the counter, passing it back to her with a grin.

“Consider this my gift to you,” he told her as she took a sip and gagged at the bitter taste. “It’ll perk you right back up and make you glad you’re suffering here with me instead of anywhere else in Garreg Mach.”

“I’ll think about that when I start jittering in a bit. This tastes like straight espresso.” Her back turning on him, she couldn’t see his grin turning to more of a sly expression, knowing very well that was nearly what he’d given her. “You better be prepared to give me more of these so I can get these grades in tonight.”

It took a second for her words to sink in, but he was jumping around the counter to chase her down the moment they hit him. “Tonight? Byleth, we’re closing early today because—”

“Because classes are over? I figured as much.” She was already taking her seat once again, and Claude was able to see that she’d prepared herself for the long haul of finishing up her grades, complete with a blanket and a pillow in a bag down on the floor. “I was assuming that you’d take the opportunity to help me out, just this once, but if you’re not interested I can always find a different shop to hang out at until I’m done.”

His face contorting as he went through all of the thought processes he possibly could, he ultimately decided that he would do whatever he could for Byleth in that moment, whether it was continuing to give her free drinks or let her stay as late as she wanted. “I’ll see if Leonie’s chill with you hanging out here until you’re finished,” he told her, knowing that if anyone was truly itching to get out of the shop for a couple weeks, it was the manager herself. “She’ll probably say no, but there’s no harm in trying.”

“Trying’s all I can ask for, really.” Byleth set her cup down on the table, already partially emptied, and she was right back to grading her essays, while Claude gave a few slow nods before ducking back behind the counter and into the bakery area, where Leonie was doing a walkthrough of cleaning needs with Lysithea and Marianne.

The moment Leonie saw him standing there, she pointed in the direction of one of the machines and the other two went investigating, while she trudged over to where Claude was waiting. “Something going on?” she asked, putting on her best managerial voice. “I’m sure that almost every regular we’ve gained over this semester hasn’t showed up today because they understand this place is a front for a class, so I’m sure that if you’ve got a problem I need to deal with it’s some stranger.”

“Yeah, actually, about that. Not really a problem I need you to deal with.” Scratching his foot against the floor, Claude tried not to meet Leonie’s eyes until the split second before he started to tell her what was going on, but when they did lock he could tell she knew what he was about to say. “Byleth’s here, and she needs somewhere to work until she’s got all her grades in, and I was wondering…could here work? I can do some deep cleaning of the seating area while she finishes up, so that when we come back in a couple weeks everything’s the cleanest it’s been.”

It took several minutes of Leonie standing there, her hand brought up to the bridge of her nose that she was pinching in thought, for her to finally concede that the offer he’d made to clean was one that she couldn’t pass up. “Just make sure this place is locked down tightly before you leave, I guess,” she said, dropping her hand and giving a single, resolute sigh that told Claude he’d won the battle. “I don’t want Hanneman coming by over break and finding this place ransacked, you know?”

“Trust me, doors will be tightly locked when I leave, if anyone’s getting in here while we’re closed it’ll be through a window.” He shot Leonie a couple of finger guns, to which she rolled her eyes and went back to her walkthrough with the bakers, while he headed out to the still-empty café part of the building, finding Byleth exactly where he’d left her. “Manager says it’s all good if you stay here as long as you need to, and I’ll be right here with you,” he told her, gesturing to the room with so many tables to scrub and push aside for the break. “I’ve just got to get a bunch of my own work done while you’re doing yours.”

“If you get tired of working, feel free to sit with me.” Byleth wasn’t looking at Claude, as she was focused on the essay she was grading, but he could tell that she meant her offer in a way that wasn’t just a friendly one, and the idea of taking her up on it was one that he could barely resist.

But resist he did, because he knew that if he started slacking off then and a customer came inside, he’d be in trouble. Or he’d be in trouble anyway, because the next customer to come inside was one of Byleth’s students who immediately saw that the other people in the shop were the guy who worked behind the counter and their professor. “Hey, mind if I ask you a question about my grade?” Sylvain—the one who lived just a few doors down from Claude, the one who’d been taking secret pictures of him—asked loudly, causing Byleth’s head to shoot straight up from the essay she’d been reading. “That’s the spirit, thanks for giving me an ear. I noticed that you marked me down for ‘historical inaccuracy’, but that can’t be right, Felix even told me I was writing the story exactly as it happened.”

“I doubt that to be true,” she coldly replied, shifting her eyes back down to what she was reading, “because there’s no way Felix would do that…unless he was setting you up for failure. There is no such thing as ‘historical accuracy’ in a story about a so-called romantic tryst you swear you watched happen that never actually happened, the grade you received on that portion of your paper was well-deserved.”

“Yeah, see, I don’t really agree with that, and I think…” Trailing off, Sylvain looked over at Claude with a rather playful smirk. “Tall, dark, and handsome over here might agree with me if he saw the points I made about a lustful professor shacking up with one of her students so his grade didn’t suffer.”

For a second, all Claude could feel was anger at hearing such an accusation be tossed out, but he knew that he couldn’t show any emotions at all toward what was said if he was going to get out of the situation faster. “At no point did such a thing happen, Sylvain, and I already told you that these sorts of accusations can lead to my termination from my position. Is that the sort of game you want to play?”

“Then how come he can bed you all he wants?” Despite what Byleth had just said, Sylvain was pointing fingers at Claude, enraging them both because they knew that he was doing nothing but telling lies at that point. “Answer me that, if you won’t admit to sleeping with anyone so they can pass, why’re you sleeping with the barista guy?”

“She’s not, dude, leave me out of this,” Claude spat, barely resisting the urge to throw a dirty cleaning cloth at Sylvain’s face. “I don’t know what goes on in her classroom, but Byl—Professor Eisner and I have had nothing but a customer service relationship and that’s as far as it’s ever going to get.”

“Because he’s a student here in Garreg Mach and I’m a professor, it’s illegal and illicit, even if he isn’t a student of my own.” There was clear anger in Byleth’s words too, but she remained steady as ever and was beginning to get Sylvain to see the error of his ways. “I know that you and your friends have joked endlessly about Dimitri and his schoolboy crush on me, but I’m not quite into the rugged men like him, fake eyepatch and all that. My interest lies in academics, not in people.”

Finding that his argument had no feet to stand on, but that he’d come all the way to the Golden Perk to cause a scene in the first place, Sylvain had to meekly order himself a drink to go from Claude, who had to keep himself from spitting in the cup as he poured the coffee. There was no tip, there was no thank you, there was barely any eye contact as the drink was handed over and he was out the door. “Geez, that guy really wrote a paper about you hooking up with one of your students?” Claude asked once he knew that no one was going to overhear him. “What a sleazy thing to do.”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, he accused me of _wanting_ to sleep with one of my students, who most definitely did have a crush on me during classes.” Her voice showing that she’d already calmed down, Byleth set aside her work for a moment and pulled out her blanket, covering her lap with it. “Then he said I was stringing him along, because I was playing interested but refusing to do anything because of…someone else.”

“A tall, dark, and handsome someone else?” he suggested, using Sylvain’s exact words because they felt right in the moment. When Byleth turned away from looking towards him, he knew he had her caught. “Well, guess I better get to working on growing out my beard during break, I’ve had it shaved all school year for sanitary reasons, but I can’t have a professor lusting over me and I happen to know she doesn’t care for rugged men.”

“I don’t think you changing your appearance would make me think any less of you, Claude,” she replied, her eyes still facing the window and not him. “I’ve done some digging into who you are, a professor by the name of Hanneman has been quite the help in getting information on about who, exactly, Claude von Riegan is, and I—”

“Don’t ask me about what I know you’re about to ask.”

“—I’m curious about why you’re here, taking this class, rather than doing anything else with your life.” Now Byleth was turning back toward him, the smallest of smiles on her lips as if she was amused with the topic she’d approached. “I didn’t inquire about the details regarding your enrollment, although Hanneman was quite eager to share those with me if I wanted them, but it did seem that you being here had something to do with him specifically.”

Claude knew from that moment on that Byleth’s behavior that day had been, no doubt, because she knew more about him than he’d wanted anyone there to know, and she was choosing to divulge that secret in the most roundabout way. “I owe Hanneman for an accident we were involved in, plus he knows the less-than-savory details about my life that the school doesn’t need to know about,” he explained, coming to the booth seat and sitting down next to her on it, as she threw the blanket over his legs as well as her own. “Business isn’t really my thing, neither is school if we’re being honest, but I had to be here to make good on my debt to him and that’s why I’m here with you today.”

She went silent for a little while, basking in the warmth he’d brought when he sat down with her, and slowly but surely she brought the blanket up, until she was leaning back with it covering herself with plenty extra to cover him as well. “I’m going to take a nap before I get back to work,” she told him, “and whether you’re still here when I wake up, that’s up to you, I guess.”

“I still have a job I’m doing…” he reminded her, but seeing her laying her head back against the seat, her seafoam green hair splayed everywhere as she dozed off, he knew that he couldn’t pull himself away from her in that moment. He glanced toward the counter, where there had been a grand total of one customer in who really knew how long, and he decided that with it being the last day they were open, if anyone else came in for a bit Leonie could be the one to deal with them.

At some point he fell asleep there next to Byleth, because when he realized what was going on the room was a lot dimmer, the closed sign was plastered to the door, and the two of them were the only people left in the shop. There was a moment where he dazedly looked at her and considered falling back asleep as he’d been, but it dawned on him that she was supposed to be grading essays and an hours-long nap in the middle of that was not going to be good for her productivity. When he shook her awake she came to with a gasp, as if he’d caused her to rise from the middle of a deep sleep, and before he could explain a thing she was frantically tossing the blanket aside and getting back to her computer.

For a moment there, everything had been peaceful in their lives, and Claude would have been lying if he said he didn’t wish it could stay that way. He didn’t know Byleth too well, beyond the customer aspect of her as well as vague understandings of her professional life, but he would give up just about everything if it meant getting to be with her—and he wondered if she’d consider doing the same if it came down to it.

It was dark out when she finally submitted her final grades, him having spent the time making sure every last speck of grime was off of the tables and countertops. “I think we can call it a night,” she proclaimed, beginning to pack up. “And now I get to walk home in the dark, but I’d say it was worth it. I’ve never quite had a nap like that before.”

“I’d offer you a ride, but I don’t know how well your pile of things would handle riding on the back of my bike,” he replied with a scratch at the back of his neck, realizing that offering to take a professor home on a motorcycle would be more trouble than it was worth. “But I could at least ride alongside you as you walk, if that’s cool with you?”

“It’s a kind thought, but I think I’ll pass. It’s just a few blocks to my place, I’ve made it there in the snow and cold before, I can make it tonight.” As they both finished getting ready to go, they made idle talk between them, feeling like a bond had been deepened by their booth nap they’d shared, and by the time they were heading out for the next couple of weeks, numbers and addresses had been exchanged and a promise was made that they’d keep in touch over the break.

Claude thought that once he was on his bike that’d be the end of Byleth that day, but he watched her down the street just a bit, looking at him with the faintest of smiles on her face only visible due to the overhead streetlight shining directly down on her. There was something about her presence there on that darkened sidewalk, illuminated by a light from above, that made her feel more angelic than she’d ever once been before, a blessing that had been given to Claude for his sacrifice in dealing with Practical Business when he had no actual need for the class.

The whole ride back to his apartment was spent with thoughts of her and her bright hair and her kind gestures and work-focused mind, and even as he was parking his bike in its usual spot inside of the room he couldn’t help but think that he could just drive back over and spend some time with her. A knock at the door broke him from his reverie, and he went to see who it was, to find Sylvain standing there, a sheepish look on his face as he asked to come inside. “I just wanted to apologize for being a dick earlier, it wasn’t cool and wasn’t called for,” he said once Claude granted him entry. “You and the professor deserved better than that, and if you wanted to report me for harassment I’d be understanding of it.”

“You couldn’t help it that you’re jealous she’s not into you or one of your friends,” Claude told him, giving his shoulder a firm pat and watching Sylvain shrink underneath his strong grasp. “It’s only natural, goddess knows I’d do the same if I had a thing for my young professor and she was all over some middle-class worker at a coffee shop.” He paused, as Sylvain gave an awkward chuckle. “Yeah, laugh about it all you want, but here’s the catch: your professor? She’s not into just some ‘middle-class’ guy, and she knows it.”

“Ah, talking big game about yourself, love that confidence. Wish I had it for myself, but that’s life.” It was increasingly clear that Sylvain wanted no part of the conversation beyond his apology, but Claude could see right through his tough-guy disguise and wanted to make a point of it. “I should be going now, my friend Felix’s on his way over and I don’t wanna be missing in action when he gets there, you dig? Especially not if he invites the whole squad over, our whole project group was going to get together at some point and…you’re not letting me go that easily, are you?” Claude’s wordless nod was enough to make Sylvain gulp. “Yeah, uh, didn’t think so.”

“Stay for a while, I’d love to hear you tell me more about your project group and your friends and maybe even a thing or two about the other one who has a thing for Byleth. Dimitri, that’s his name, isn’t it?” There was a line between playful and intimidating that Claude was trying to toe with his treatment of Sylvain, but he was certain he was on the wrong side of it when the redhead silenced himself completely and didn’t want to say another word until he could leave. He was back later that night, though, with black-haired Felix and a bunch of others that he’d never seen before, as well as some he had, all there to share stories about their experience in Byleth’s class with him.

By no means was it anything that Claude had hoped for that night, but he was able to come away from it with a deeper appreciation for the kind of patience she had for teaching students like these, and a stronger desire to spend more time with her in the future. Break was only a couple weeks long, taking them into the beginning of the Guardian Moon, but he knew that he wouldn’t ask going that long without seeing her. That wasn’t something he was to admit to these now-former students of hers, although he was sure they could guess it just based on how he would smile to himself with a lot of their stories. But all of that sense of camaraderie was lost when one of the many people crowded there in his apartment let it slip that they were all planning on taking the second half of Byleth’s class in the coming term, and he realized these people weren’t former students at all.

“You mean, you’re getting me to spill everything I know about her just to use it against her when you’re in her class again?” he asked, completely blown away by the audacity they all had, and while a couple of them seemed genuinely shocked that he’d accuse them of such a thing, Sylvain’s smug smile told a different story. Without much in the way of thinking through what was going on clearly, Claude demanded they all leave, and slowly they made their way out of the room, allowing him to slam the door on them and get them out of his sights…except for one.

“I promise a word of this will not find its way to the headmaster or the dean, or anyone with even a lick of authority,” the kindhearted woman named Mercedes that had come in with the others said, her head bowing slightly as she spoke. “I know that what they’ve done is a bit uncalled for, but most of them meant nothing by it, and I can assure you that’s the truth. The only ones who have any sort of stake in this are Sylvain and Dimitri, and at the end of the day I think one of them’s smart enough to know this is not a situation to be involved in, and the other is Sylvain and he’ll get over his crush on the professor soon enough.”

“Thanks, but how do I know I can trust you?” He already felt like his ability to trust had been betrayed by the surprise gathering in his home, but Claude was beginning to feel desperate to keep Byleth’s job intact. “What way can you prove your worth to me, right here and right now?”

Lifting her head so that he could see that she was smiling radiantly, her whole face beaming, Mercedes said, “I don’t think I can really prove anything right this second, but I want you to know that my word is as good as your own. And besides…” She pulled out her long ponytail, and much to Claude’s surprise the good majority of it came out in her hand, leaving her with a very short haircut that she’d been clipping hair into. “I think that you can use my own secret as leverage here. I’ll protect you if you protect me.”

“P-protect you?” he repeated, glancing towards his windows to make sure no one was spying on him, beginning to suspect he’d slipped into an adult film without realizing it. “I don’t know if I’m up for that, we just met and all.”

“Oh, no, I mean that I want you to keep it a secret from all of _them_ that I’m much older than the young twenty-something they think I am. I’ve got a good five years on the majority of them, you see.” The way Mercedes laughed sounded similar to chimes in the wind, and Claude felt more at ease knowing that her secret wasn’t too risqué or dangerous to withhold. “I’ll protect your student-teacher relationship if you protect my friendships.”

With his back metaphorically against the wall, Claude knew there was no choice but to accept her offer. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Mercedes,” he said after holding out a hand for a shake, which she took after putting her fake ponytail back in. “I’ll keep my lips sealed if you keep theirs sealed too.” For whatever reason, that handshake was the least comforting thing Claude had ever had to commit to, but he didn’t have anything else he could do unless he wanted to lose something that meant a lot to him on terms that weren’t his own.

Now, if it was losing Byleth for reasons of his own actual doing, that would’ve been completely different, but he had no intentions of driving her away.

* * *

For the rest of the break between semesters, Claude’s mind was racing over the potential backstabbing that Mercedes could’ve given him in regards to what had gone down in his apartment, but based on the fact that Byleth was able to come over a time or two for a drink and some personal life sharing, he knew that she was at least doing her part in keeping things safe. Sylvain didn’t show his head around any time that Byleth was nearby, and neither did any of the others who’d been involved in the night’s ordeal, with the exception of Mercedes, who did pop by one time to let Byleth know of her involvement with things and that if anything went wrong, it wasn’t on her.

“Do I _want_ to know what this is about?” Byleth had asked when the conversation happened, to which Claude shrugged, wishing that Mercedes hadn’t been there and hadn’t ever opened her mouth on the matter. As far as he was concerned, it could have stayed out of the professor’s ears, but at the same time it somewhat did make sense that she needed to be aware that some of her students were trying to ruin her life.

When the Golden Perk reopened the day before classes resumed, it was with one less person than they’d been used to having show up, the third instance of something going wrong with the coffee shop itself, but the fourth such thing in Claude’s mind (everything with Sylvain and the others being the true third). “Marianne has decided that for her mental health, she can’t continue on with the class,” Leonie told everyone when they’d all gathered in the shop, moving tables to reorganize the seating area together. “She alluded to some wild and crazy things going on but didn’t give details, and I told her that I think Lysithea will be able to handle the bakery without her at this point.”

“Definitely got it under control,” Lysithea replied, giving a thumbs-up from where she’d sat herself up on the counter, munching on one of her cakes that she’d brought in for everyone to have as a snack. “I’ll miss having her around, she kept my sweet tooth in check back there, but the work’s not going to be too hard without her.”

“Down two and we still have a lot of working to do,” Ignatz mumbled under his breath, while Claude looked over at Hilda and how she too wasn’t doing anything to help their setup for the shop. “I can’t help but think that this course might end in a lot of failed grades for most of us, which I am not exactly looking forward to. Unless…” Looking at Leonie, who was strongarming a table with Raphael doing the same across the room, he yelled out, “I think we’ve got it under control with the six of us, don’t we?”

“Definitely!” she replied, sliding the table into its new resting place, completely ignoring that Claude had stopped moving chairs to go stand over by Hilda. “I’m confident that at least the six of us will pass the class, sucks about Marianne but she couldn’t hold up, and we all know about Lorenz and his disappearance for no reason. Anyone hear about him lately?”

The group had a resounding negative response to that question, which amused Leonie, but when she and the others were back to work, Claude was nudging Hilda with his elbow to get her attention. “Want to talk about what’s eating at you?” he asked quietly, fully willing to let their conversation go just between the two of them. “I’ll share my break if you share yours.”

“I’d rather choke, thanks,” she snapped in response, flouncing off to go start moving around knickknacks on the shelves and walls, and he was left looking for answers—until he happened to glance outside and saw Byleth walking by, her eyes looking longingly in the coffee shop and lighting up at seeing him. They shared a wave and that was the end of the interaction, and small as it might have been, he was glad they’d been able to have it; something told him that those small things were going to be what got him through the second semester of the class he’d never asked to have to take.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter art courtesy of @shareey0 on twitter! I am so glad I'm finally able to share your work with the world, it's so cute and it definitely illustrates the tenderness of the moment here! <3


	3. Chapter 3

The only thing that could make the whole situation worse than it currently was going into the second half of Practical Business was Hanneman deciding that he needed to have a meeting with a representative from the shop. Because they were already short-handed and it would be detrimental if just about anyone else went, for various reasons, Claude was volunteered for the role and he had to do it begrudgingly, without anyone to blame but himself for being selected. He was the one who’d made it clear he knew him better than anyone else, even if his reasons for that were not ones he was fond of thinking about.

But Hanneman had set up the meeting with the understanding that it _would_ be Claude going, so when he showed up in the dingy office and offhandedly mentioned that Leonie would have been there if it were possible, the professor seemed unnerved by it. “Yes, well, she was smart to choose you instead,” he coughed out, offering Claude a chair which he took after some apprehension. “I’ve heard quite a bit about your romantic pursuits as of late. Are you able to focus on your work with all this going on in your life?”

Doing what felt like several double-takes in quick succession, Claude almost couldn’t believe what he’d just been asked, from someone in a position of power over him that should not have been prying into such matters in the first place. “Look, I’m doing the job just fine, with or without those distractions. Whoever decided to run and tell you about that should’ve just kept their mouth shut.”

“Ah, of course, defensive behavior as always, it’s what I’ve come to expect from you. Professor Manuela was the one who informed me of your behavior, because a student she has been working closely with had heard about it from a friend of theirs who happens to be taking the lucky professor’s class. Unfortunately, with it being of a different school, there is nothing administratively I can ask the headmaster or dean to do, although they both have their eyes on the situation if it escalates further.” Hanneman steepled his fingers as he rest his arms on his desk in front of him, while Claude, still flabbergasted at what he was hearing, stared blankly in his direction. “But aside from all of that distracting material, the job is going well for all of you, correct?”

It took several seconds for Claude to find any words to say, but he was thankful they’d already segued into something actually relevant to why any of them would be in that office in the first place. “Uh, yeah, minus the fact we’ve got two quitters, but those of us who’ve stuck it out this long will be there until the end. That’s what Leonie thinks, anyway.”

“Good woman, that Pinelli girl. She’s taken on the leadership role for you all just fine, she’ll do well in her future endeavors…provided she lasts to the end of the course, naturally.” His fingertips tapping silently together, Hanneman looked expectantly towards Claude, as if he was waiting for more news from the shop to be dropped.

“I’ve got nothing else for you, just that we’re all doing great and that Lorenz and Marianne are no longer there,” Claude said, somewhat confused about why he was being given such a look. “What more do you want from me?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, discussing your enrollment status would be—”

“Yeah, no, we’re not going to get into that.” Doing as he’d wanted to since the moment he’d first showed up, Claude rose from his seat, gave a very sarcastic salute in farewell, and left the office, hearing Hanneman sigh in his wake. He couldn’t be bothered to address something else completely unrelated to his visit, not when he’d already had to talk about his romance with Byleth; if anything, it seemed that Hanneman was looking for a way to get him to drop the class and have to pay the price of failing his half of the deal that had been made after their accident. Determined not to let that happen, no matter the cost, Claude nearly sprinted down to the parking lot, hopped on his bike, and hightailed it to the Golden Perk, which was as busy as ever.

Unusually, Leonie was working the register with Ignatz as her drink-maker, with no sign of Raphael or Hilda anywhere. She seemed relieved to see Claude come in, and the moment there was a break in the flow of customers she pulled him aside to let him in on what was going on. “While she was in the middle of her class earlier, Maya’s computer broke because someone got a bit heated and threw their drink across the shop and it just _happened_ to spill over her keyboard, so Raphael’s off dealing with that. As for Hilda…she never showed up this morning so I’ve been filling her spot.”

“And now you want me to step in for you?” he suggested, seeing Leonie frantically nod in agreement. “Figured as much. Hanneman doesn’t expect us all to pass, by the way, not with two people gone.”

“I figured as much there too,” she laughed, sounding rather relieved that she wasn’t going to be manning the register any longer. “I’m going to try to contact Hilda to see what’s going on there, because I haven’t heard anything yet and this is the first chance I’ve had to do anything about it.”

After exchanging a high-five they switched their roles and Leonie was off doing her managerial duties, while Claude slipped on an apron and started taking orders. It seemed the meat of the rush had passed before he got there, so it was lighter work than he was sure had been done before, but he was still sending an obscene amount of drink orders to Ignatz, who was working his hardest. When Raphael got back about an hour later, he was right to work helping with getting the orders taken care of and delivered to their waiting customers, and once the last customer was served and the store had emptied out, the three men were hanging out behind the counter, all frazzled to different extents and for different reasons.

“I’d never think I’d say this,” Ignatz started, “but I kind of wish we hadn’t been closed over break. It seems everyone missed frequenting this place and wanted to visit at the exact same time as everyone else.”

“It wouldn’t have been as bad if Hilda was here, and if I hadn’t had to leave when I did,” Raphael pointed out, gesturing with a broad shoulder over to where Maya was sitting in the only occupied chair in the whole place, her brand-new laptop sitting in front of her as she was frantically typing away at something. “I can’t believe that guy did that, and didn’t even care to pay us for needing a new computer. What a big, rude jerk!”

“I would tell you to watch your language,” Leonie said with a chuckle as she poked her head out from the kitchen where she’d stayed after her phone call, helping Lysithea out with the bakery goods, “but there’s no one here to really get mad about that. Oh, and, uh, don’t expect tomorrow to be any easier unless you’re cool with skipping your class tomorrow, Raph.”

Sharing a look between them all, it was Claude who beat them to the punch in asking what they’d all come to the conclusion of. “Let me guess, Hilda’s not coming back, huh?”

“No, she’ll just be out tomorrow and the next day, but she’ll be back.” Leonie paused, a worried look crossing her eyes before she shook it off. “No, she _will_ be back, or else I’ll be paying her a visit.”

“Something tells me she won’t be back,” Ignatz mumbled the moment he knew Leonie was out of earshot, and the other two nodded in solidarity, feeling the same way about things. It set up a frantic couple of days because the next day had Raphael out until afternoon due to classes, and then the following one was when Ignatz had to leave an hour after opening to get to his studio class, meaning that Claude was the only one who worked both days, neither of which were fun by any means (and neither of which had Byleth come in, which he was surprised about because she’d always been so diligent about her visits).

On the third day, Hilda did come back, looking sour as she stood at the register taking orders, but she was there and that was more than had been expected of her by the guys, so they were fine with her being snappish and rude. When the shop cleared and closed that day, and it was just Leonie and Hilda doing work behind the counter while Claude wiped down the tables, he was able to overhear their conversation and gain insight into what was happening. “This sounds so dumb, but I never thought I’d want to fail a test in my life,” Hilda lamented, while Leonie looked at her with her head tilted to the side, giving a soft hum of understanding. “I know that it answered all my questions and then some, but…I didn’t want to pass that test no matter what.”

“Well, on the bright side, you’ll be able to make it through the semester, won’t you?” Leonie asked, straightening her neck. “I can’t imagine that you wouldn’t be able to.”

“You really think I can _afford_ to be working at this place anymore? I’m not going to suffer through this work for a class credit I’m not going to be able to use for a long time.” Right as Claude looked over to see what was going on, Hilda slammed a glass down on the countertop, shattering it and sending glass flying everywhere. “Caspar says he’s not going to drop out so that he can get a good job after he graduates, so I guess that means I’m the one giving up my dream of owning my jewelry store for a while.”

“Don’t think of it like that, it’ll all work out,” Leonie reassured her, grabbing a dustpan to start sweeping glass into. “And hey, once I’ve got my degree and start my freelancing association, you’re welcome to join and try to get a jewelry shop going under my banner, it’ll be hard work but you won’t need to have finished school to get there.”

Hilda thanked her for the kind offer, but had another piece to add to the puzzle. “But if I drop out now, my brother’s going to cut me off of his money, and that’s not really going to work out for me either, you know? How am I…how are we…well, going to afford to live on no money?”

“So you’ll be staying through the end of the semester then, that’s what I’m hearing?” Claude interrupted, narrowly missing a semi-stale muffin being chucked at his head by Hilda for eavesdropping on her conversation. “Sorry, sorry, it’s hard not to hear what you’re talking about when there’s literally nothing else happening here.”

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Whether I stay or go, I’m going to wish I did the other thing, I bet.” Groaning loudly, Hilda grabbed the sides of her head and shook it wildly, letting out her frustrations for a moment. “I wish I could just take back everything I did so I wasn’t in this stupid position in the first place!”

“That sounds like a personal problem,” Claude said, finding her display of irritation rather over-the-top but not wanting to dig further than he clearly already had. “I’ll leave you to venting to Leonie about it, since I really can’t be bothered to care too much about it.”

Leonie looked at him and gave a single shake of her head. “Too bad you’ll end up caring more about it than you realize.”

Deep down, Claude wanted to say that he really wouldn’t, but as the ladies got back to their conversation at a lower volume than before and he finished wiping down the tables, he knew that he was better off not saying anything at all. That didn’t stop him from bringing it up with Byleth once he got back to his apartment and called her, listening to her talk about her day of teaching before she opened up the floor to him. “Well, I nearly lost my life from a flying muffin,” he started with a laugh, her deadpan response being if he was okay. “Yeah, I’m fine, except for the fact that I almost died.”

“What really happened, Claude?”

“Just listening in on some work drama. Apparently we’re teetering on the edge of losing someone else, but she was being rather cryptic about why…” That piqued Byleth’s interest and she asked for details, which he dutifully gave her as best as he could, making it very clear that at no point had any of it been said to him so he was hearing it when he shouldn’t have been, and she was giving small mutters of understanding with every word.

Finally, when he’d finished delivering all the details, she came to the only conclusion that made sense to her. “Sounds like someone was sleeping around when they shouldn’t have been, from what I’m hearing.”

“But I know she mentioned her boyfriend, I even told you I heard her talking about him. The guy who knocked down my motorcycle, like, twice now? Ring a bell?” He’d made sure to slip in specific mention of Caspar when he’d repeated what he’d heard, because it felt just important enough to matter. “What do you mean she’s been sleeping around?”

“Oh, right, she’s dating that guy. I’ve seen him going to and from classes in one of the other buildings, some of my students were talking about him earlier today. Guess I can tell them that the rumors they heard about him were true.” Her tone was still flat and giving very little in the way of answers, but Claude was beginning to connect dots that he’d been given, following the tiniest of bread crumb trails to find the answer he was looking for.

Without much hesitation, he said, “If they’re starting rumors about him, then I’d be better off not feeding that fire. You keep what I’ve said to you secret, don’t need Hanneman breathing down my neck because I’m fueling people’s lies about others through you.”

“My lips are as good as sealed,” she replied, “and that’s better than your coworker’s legs are.”

Naturally, when Claude went to work the next day and Hilda wasn’t there, he cursed his bad luck on getting to address things with her. But Leonie was there, and she knew the truth, so he considered talking to her about it; he ultimately decided not to, and waited for the person in question to come in and own up to what she’d apparently done. When she did show up, it was with Caspar on her arm, and they seemed to be inseparable until she went behind the counter and he had to leave, and his bumbling, almost hilarious way of telling her he loved her and that he’d see her when she got off was something that Claude wished he hadn’t had to hear that day.

“I’m going to take it he knows?” Leonie asked her before Claude had a chance to say a word, him having to step into the corner behind the counter to make it seem less obvious that he was there wanting to get in on conversation. “Based on that display, he’s got to.”

“Oh, he definitely knows, and he’s over the moon about it, but I told him to keep it on the down-low because we don’t need to become the front page in the college newspaper over our personal business,” Hilda answered, before noticing that Claude was there and giving him a disgusted expression. “Mostly because Mr. Professor Dater over there can hold the headlines as much as he wants.”

“I wasn’t aware there was a college paper, much less one that I’ve been on the front page of, so thanks for telling me that.” Holding his hands up rather defensively, Claude wanted to make it clear he wasn’t looking for a fight, just some answers, but the world was going to have other plans for getting him that information.

Those other plans in specific were Raphael and Maya coming in, one of them making a beeline for a table to get set up for class, while the other came and placed his giant hands on Hilda’s shoulders, her flinching at the touch. “Just ran into Caspar outside, when were you gonna tell all of us?”

“I didn’t plan on it anytime soon, but apparently Caspar and his big mouth couldn’t keep things to himself like I’d asked him to,” Hilda grumbled, trying to shake Raphael’s hands off of her but failing to do so. “It’s not even _that_ big of a deal, really, we’re grown adults and can do our own thing.”

“But that’s a huge thing!” he protested, not even caring that she was trying to shake him off. “I’d say it’s the hugest of things, really. How are you gonna both still go to school and—”

“Raphael, if I were you I’d back off now,” Leonie cautioned, cutting him off as she saw rage building in Hilda’s face. “I think you’re overloading her with all of your badgering, and I don’t know if you really want to be doing that.”

Now that he had just enough to know that what he and Byleth had been dancing around the previous night was the truth, Claude wanted to say something on the matter to make it clear he knew, but he too could see just how uncomfortable Hilda was getting with everything and he had no intention of being the one to set her off. So he held his tongue, knowing that when the time was right he’d be able to say something to clue her in to him knowing what was going on.

By the end of the day, everyone was fully aware of the fact that Hilda and Caspar were expecting a little one, and it hadn’t once been said outright; it turned out that she was utterly incapable of not being overdramatic about every little thing and she gave it away to just about every customer that came in. After closing, when it was just Leonie, Claude, and Raphael still in the store, everyone else having headed home and the three of them finishing up, it was obvious they all wanted to address it but none of them wanted to be the one to bring it up. That was when Claude decided to cash in on his knowledge and he set the mugs he was stocking back down on the counter rather than on their shelf, clearing his throat to say something.

“We know, Claude,” Leonie interrupted, giving him a no-nonsense look. “We all know it, she’s only actually told me and Raph heard it from Caspar himself, but we know it anyway. And no, I don’t know what we’re going to do when she inevitably leaves.”

Deflating his high shoulders at being shut down as he was, Claude thought over what he’d just heard and replied, “You had your conversation with her yesterday about it, you know she’s staying through the end of the semester for money reasons.”

“One, personal conversation you should not have been listening in on,” she snapped in response, startling both men at how brash her words came out. “Two, that’s her plan right now but we all know she’s not sticking to it. And three, it’s going to be nearly impossible for her to make that happen if her timeline really is what she thinks it is.”

“If she’s just telling people now, doesn’t that mean she’s just found out?” Raphael asked, scratching his back at the shoulder while he used a table as an armrest to get into the optimal position for doing so. “That’s what always happens in Maya’s shows she watches.”

The grimace that crossed Leonie’s face at that assumption told them both that it was wrong, but they were in the dark about how wrong it was until she explained it to them. “That’s what I thought at first, until she told me more about what was going on. She’s known about this since before break, guys, and she didn’t tell anyone until yesterday because she didn’t want it getting out.”

“Well, joke’s on her because it has gotten out and all of Garreg Mach is going to know sooner rather than later.” For a second, Claude felt like he was finally going to be overshadowed in the gossip department at the botched reveal of this news, but Leonie was yet again going to shut him down with something that she muttered. “Speak up, I can’t hear you telling me how right I am.”

“Everyone was going to find out soon anyway, whether she told them or not.” Pressing her hands together in front of her face, Leonie’s eyes flickered towards the ceiling as if she was praying, before she continued. “When she didn’t show up the other day, that wasn’t because she was sick or she was busy, it was because she had an appointment to check on the little one, since she felt something was…off.” Once again Leonie looked like she was praying, and it became obvious that she _was_ because she knew she was revealing someone else’s story without their permission. “I’m happy to say nothing was wrong, but they told her that based on the baby’s size, it has to be older than they first thought.”

“Okay, and why does this have her missing work two days in a row and screwing us all over?” Claude asked, while Raphael attempted to wrap his head around what he was hearing. “You’re not going to baby her because she’s having a baby, are you?”

“Goddess, no, that’s not the plan at all! She’s expected to work just as hard as everyone else until she leaves, whether that’s because of legal reasons or because she quits.” Shaking her head, Leonie gave one final prayer before miming zipping her lips. “Keep this one quiet, Hilda will murder me if it gets out to everyone, but the second day she missed work was because she decided that was when she needed to go shopping for new clothes, since she didn’t want people finding out just from looking at her.”

“As if anyone would be observant enough to do that,” laughed Claude, looking over at Raphael, who seemed to be thinking about if he’d noticed anything different. “She’s just overreacting, which I’ve heard pregnant women are apt to do. I haven’t noticed a thing, aside from her suddenly being more of a grouchy bitch than usual.”

“Put the cups away and let’s get out of here,” Leonie told him, suddenly disinterested in the conversation. “And never, ever call Hilda those things in front of me again.”

* * *

The fourth instance of something going wrong was, naturally, when Hilda decided that enough was enough and she wasn’t going to be working at the Golden Perk anymore. It came days before Spring Break in the Lone Moon, one of the worst times for Garreg Mach overall, but it wasn’t fully unexpected. She’d called off every day the previous week, citing various reasons that Leonie only accepted because she knew a lawsuit could brew if she didn’t allow her to not have to come in, and so when she stopped calling and showing up entirely, everyone knew it was the end.

Even with the foresight that it was going to happen, it came as a blow to the team overall, who had appreciated her presence despite her doing nothing but standing (and oftentimes sitting) at the counter and taking orders. “She’s not coming back,” Leonie told them all after close the day the decision had been made, when she’d requested that everyone stay long enough to have a serious discussion. “No matter if she wants to or not, there’s no way that we can have such a liability on our team. And that’s…not great for this place.”

“What do we do about being understaffed?” Ignatz asked, knowing that the answer was not one he wanted to hear, but he was hopeful Leonie would have some great suggestion. “It’s already been hard enough being down two people, but three?”

“Trust me, I’ve been running through all of the possibilities here and none of them look great for us as a whole.” Hearing Leonie on the brink of tears was almost heart-wrenching to everyone, because she’d taken leadership onto her own shoulders and now she was facing a horrible situation where all of the work they’d done was for naught. “I’m not giving up on the Perk, if it means staying here by myself and doing the work of eight people alone. You’re all welcome to leave, though, if you feel that suffering through the rest of the semester isn’t going to be worth it.”

Standing in the doorway to the bakery, a pastry in her hand and powdered sugar all over her slightly thick cheeks and the apron that clung to her tightly, Lysithea took a bite of her prize and swallowed it down before she said anything. “Nowhere else is going to let me sneak as many snacks as I want while I’m working, so I’ll be here with you until the end.”

Thankful for her support, Leonie looked at her and gave a smile, watching her finish eating her pastry in two bites. “Thank you for that, the bakery part is what I’m least confident in being able to do myself. Having you and your talented tastes to keep creating desserts is exactly what I need.”

“We’ll still be here too,” Raphael said, referring to himself and Ignatz. “If we’re gonna rebuild my parents’ place and get it back running, it’d be best if we have the degrees to be in charge, and we can’t get those without finishing this class.”

“Thank you both,” she told them, giving them the same smile she’d just been giving Lysithea. Then she turned to face Claude, and everyone else followed suit, until he had four people in need of some assistance staring him down. “What about you, Claude? I know you’re only here because you have to be, not because you want to be, but…”

As tempting as it was to take the easy way out and abandon ship when they were already sinking, Claude thought about Byleth and how she would come in next time and find him gone, and if he stopped attending the class then Hanneman would have his way with him and he’d be out of Garreg Mach overall. “It would make sense for me to leave now while I can, but I started this journey with you and I intend to finish it with you as well, regardless of how hard that might be. Have to prove I’m stronger than those who took this class needing to pass it and they left, you know.”

“That’s the spirit!” Throwing a fist up into the air, Leonie punched above her several times before clapping her hands together, giving everyone there with her the biggest smile she could manage. “Thankfully we have break next week, so we’ll have a bit of time to relax before we’re ran through the wringer, but we’ve got this! The end of the semester is in sight and we’ll get there, just the five of us!”

Leonie was right that they would get there, and it would be all five of them doing it, but she was blind to how socially difficult that would be for them all. Five days a week they needed to be there, minus when they had other classes to attend and weekends to rest on, and as long as they were inside that coffee shop they were living and breathing nothing but work. Claude could serve Byleth her coffee when she came in, but he couldn’t spare a second to talk to her, leaving their relationship to after work hours only, which made him more eager to get done with the class overall. Maya stayed at her table and would offer to help run drinks or even make them when she had a break between classes, and if Leonie wasn’t around Raphael would let her do it, just because she was volunteering and it was helping them just a tiny bit.

Slowly but surely they made it through each week, until there was just one left—finals week, where the students were all in desperate need of their caffeine fix and the employees were going to be tested harder than they’d ever been tested before. On the morning before the first day of finals, Leonie had everyone come in a bit early to have a pep talk, and as frazzled as they were from the breakneck speed they’d been working at before, they knew that it was going to get worse and the talk would be appreciated. “Professor Hanneman will be coming in on the last day to evaluate our work ethic and to judge if we pass or fail,” she started off, eliciting several groans from everyone, “and there’s no telling if he won’t pop in any other time this week too. That means we’ve got to do our best and follow all the rules, whether we’ve been following them before this or not.”

“What does that entail, exactly?” Claude asked, shooting Leonie a look that was meant to tell her to keep her mouth shut about his relationship behaviors, because he already knew trying to talk up his girlfriend was against the rules. “Mind refreshing us on what’s expected?”

“Sure thing,” she replied, pulling out her phone to find the list. “No eating in the kitchen, that one’s a big one.” All eyes drifted to Lysithea, whose jaw had dropped at hearing that, a pudgy hand coming to cover her agape mouth, and after a few seconds they moved on. “No leaning on countertops, no flirting with customers, no samples of drinks for anyone, things we’re pretty good about but that we need to keep in mind. One infraction could be the difference between a pass and a fail for someone, after all.”

“It’ll be fine, we’ve been doing this for months, what’s one week of needing to follow all the rules to the letter?” Even though he laughed, Claude knew that there was a lot riding on their performance that week, and if he made light of things it could be detrimental to the mindset of the people he’d been working alongside for so long. “We’ve all got this in the bag, as long as we don’t slack off and do things our own way.”

“That’s right, we’re all experts at what we do at this point, we can handle one week of needing to do things the professor’s specific way rather than our own.” Ignatz closed his eyes and sighed. “It’s just rather intimidating knowing that if we happen to make a mistake while the professor is here, we’ll be ruining all of our hard work. Surely there’s some way he’ll go easier on us because we’re so shorthanded.”

“We’ll just have to hope he’ll be gentle in his criticism,” Leonie said, “but if he isn’t, we still know we’ve done the best we can do with everything that’s been thrown our way. We’ve had three people walk out on us, but us five are going to pass this class and get to chase our dreams, whether it’s freelancing or running a bakery or a hotel, or whatever Claude’s planning to do when he’s done here. We’ll be fine, I promise!”

It was hard to think they were fine when she unlocked the front door minutes later and a crowd of people came rushing in, students looking for drinks before they went to class and professors coming in to order what they needed to get through the day of tests. There was barely a moment to stop and take a breath for several hours, with drinks constantly coming and going and orders for baked goods being called back into the bakery because Lysithea hadn’t been able to make anywhere near enough to cover what was needed. At one point, several professors whose offices were in Hanneman’s building came in, and Claude at the register knew that they were there to inspect things on his behalf, especially when they asked for heavy modifications to drinks and tasted them there at the counter in front of him, even with a line building behind them.

There wasn’t time to panic about their assessment, though, not when so many other customers needed to be served, and it wasn’t until the doors were locked that anyone was even able to talk about what had happened. “Professor Manuela and the others were definitely testing us,” Raphael said dejectedly, hanging his head, “and I don’t know if we passed their test or not. The orange-haired guy with them seemed disappointed in his drink, kinda like we forgot something in it.”

“He ordered a black coffee with one spoon of sugar in it, there’s nothing we could have forgotten,” Claude replied, remembering the order well because the black-haired man with them had only gotten a pastry, and Manuela herself had been the one to get wild with the modifications he’d carefully plugged into the register, while she talked about how cute he was and how he must have been _so_ good to his girlfriend if she was still with him. “Definitely something wrong on his end if anything was wrong at all.”

“They didn’t say anything to me when I asked them if everything was okay,” Leonie assured them, a serious look in her eyes, “but of course, that could be because they’re saving the judgment for when Professor Hanneman shows up. Giving him pointers for what to order when he comes by.”

“Either way, we’ll be fine, as long as I can get in here early to make extras of everything,” Lysithea grumbled, her having worked quite hard in the back by herself. “Even with you sending Ignatz back here to help get things going, I couldn’t ever move fast enough to have all the orders done ahead of time. I miss having Marianne around, she was a big help.”

There was a moment of silence as they all thought about Marianne and her quiet demeanor, how she’d been such a diligent worker until she had to bow out for her personal reasons. “I’ll come in early too, just to help you get set up,” Leonie said. “Tomorrow’s Raph’s day to be gone for class for a bit, so we’ll be down one big, strong man for a while. Any preparations we can make beforehand will be helpful.”

Lo and behold, the next day was even more difficult to get through, even with their mindfulness in regards to getting more set up. Even though he was gone for just over an hour, Raphael’s absence was felt with how much harder everyone was running around, and when he came in and immediately jumped into the deluge of orders the pressure was off of their shoulders if just slightly. There were no professors there to judge them that day, but unexpectedly the dean of the school came in to pick up drinks for himself and the headmaster, and seeing the green-haired man waiting impatiently at the end of the counter for his order made Claude (running drinks that day, after Raphael had gotten there to take over making them) really wish he could overstep his position for just a second to get things sorted out faster.

“You look strangely familiar,” the dean said to Claude when he was finally able to hand off the drinks. “From a regal dossier, perhaps? Where have I seen you before?”

“Can’t say I’d know where, if not here,” Claude replied, flashing a smile. “Unless you read the college paper, then…you’ll know where I’m from.”

“Ah, yes, the one dating our newest professor here in town, that would be where your face is familiar from. Although, when I saw it in those reports, it still felt strangely familiar to me, but I may just be misremembering.” With the drinks in hand, he gave Claude a firm nod before leaving, and in the wake of the conversation Claude felt himself panicking for some reason, a sensation he’d never felt before.

That night after the shop was closed and he and his motorcycle were back in his apartment, he texted Byleth, asking her to talk in-person. She seemed distressed at the request but accepted it, and soon enough she was there with him, ready to dive into whatever it was he needed to talk about. “Before you start, though, can I say something?” she asked, to which he nodded. “Seteth, the dean, contacted me earlier to ask about you. He wanted to know if I was aware of any royal ties you might have, because you felt very regal to him.”

Flinching at what she said, Claude took a few deep breaths, beckoned for Byleth to join him on his bed, and began, “So, about him calling me out on that…”

* * *

The rest of the week was beyond hellish, but when the last day came and with it came Hanneman’s final verdict on their performance, it was almost a relief to them all. He was shocked to see that it was just five students out of the original eight that were still working there, despite having been told several times about Lorenz leaving and having heard that Marianne was gone as well. “Whatever happened to the pink-haired one?” he asked, looking between the employees up at the counter. “Did she call in sick?”

“Er, something like that, but on a permanent basis,” Leonie answered, to which Hanneman looked rather confused. “She left before Spring Break due to feeling that she was, well, too pregnant to do her job efficiently. In fact, now that I think about it, she _should_ be having her baby pretty soon, maybe in a few weeks?”

“Oh, what a shame, she seemed adamant about wanting to run her own business after this.” There was only a little bit of what Hanneman said that seemed to express actual sadness for what he heard, but they all ignored his feigned emotions because it wasn’t what they needed to be focusing on. “Your menu here seems to have held up throughout the school year, excellent work putting that together. Is it something you would suggest the next class to run this place should use?”

“Definitely, the drinks are all simple to make and have been complimented many times by the customers. The baked goods, though, those may need to be redone as they’re all only so good because Lysithea’s the one making them.” Leonie grinned for a second, before her face turned almost as pale as a ghost. “I-I mean, she could definitely share her recipes, but I don’t know if they’d come out right without her tender care.”

“I heard you say my name?” Lysithea asked, coming out of the kitchen with sugar and flour coating her everywhere, no apron on and her shirt straining against her formerly-tiny frame. When she saw that Hanneman was there she gave a small yelp, ducking back into her usual hiding place. “Oh, let me get the treats I made for this occasion out of the oven, I wanted the professor to taste nothing but the best!”

“Wasn’t she…smaller when the class first started?” Hanneman asked, trying to be as gentle as he could but still be rather blunt about it. “Has she taken in a few too many of her delectable goods? I suppose the baker trying their wares is a good thing…”

Leonie wanted to dodge the question but when Lysithea came back out, a tray of treats in her arms that she was clearly eyeing with the intentions of eating them herself, she couldn’t deny it. “Yeah, Lysithea’s been big on sampling one of everything before she puts it out for sale. It’s definitely meant we’ve sold only excellent pastries, but it’s…”

“Marianne was the one keeping me in check,” Lysithea grumbled, setting the tray down on the counter so that Hanneman could take his pick of what was on it. “When she left, there wasn’t anyone to tell me to calm down on trying what I made, so I might have gone a bit overboard on the tastings.” When she stepped back from the tray, she did so while tugging her shirt down as far as she could, causing her entire upper body to jiggle slightly. “I’ll work on getting back in shape over the summer, when I’m not stuck in a bakery all day.”

“You want to be the one to put her through working out?” Claude asked Raphael with a hushed whisper, from where they were both standing on the other side of the shop, listening to everything going on between the ladies and the professor. “I’m sure you’d be great at working her down to nothing, just look at you and those muscles.”

“I could, if she asked, but me and Ignatz and Maya were planning on going back to where the hotel was to get started on rebuilding, and if she wants me to help her work out she’ll have to come with us.” Raphael looked behind the counter, at where Ignatz was in the middle of putting drinks together so that Hanneman could sample those in addition to the treats he was clearly wary of. “But either way, she’ll find someone who can make her small again. Maybe it’ll even be you?”

“Nah, I’ve got plans for myself that I can’t back down on.” That was what reminded Claude that he needed to talk to Hanneman before he left, to address everything that had put him there in the first place. “I’d love to come back around and see Lysithea back to her old self, and you and Ignatz and Leonie and maybe even Hilda too, I’m not sure on her.”

Hanneman was there for a long while, talking with the students about their experience that year running the ship. He seemed to be pleasantly thrilled with the drinks Ignatz had made, and when he did try a single bite of a single pastry he said he understood why people would order them and become reliant on them as a meal (a dig at Lysithea, who blushed violently and took the whole tray away at the comment). “It seems you all, despite the odds, have run the Golden Perk to perfection,” he said after giving it some thought, “and I will gladly allow the five of you to take passing grades on the course. I expect to see you all at graduation next week, provided that you’ve passed everything else, unless you’re still working on other classes as I know at least one of you might be.”

“We’re honored you think we’ve done a good job,” Leonie said, taking the opportunity to speak for all of them. “I know that this class has been a lot of our time as of late, but I’ll be graduating next week, as will Ignatz and Raphael. Lysithea’s still got some time before she can graduate, and Claude…well, I don’t really know about him.” She cupped her mouth and yelled his name, catching him by surprise when he heard it, and as he turned to look at her with narrowed eyes she widened her own. “Are you graduating this year or not?”

“Actually, about that, I need to talk to Hanneman.” The words were ones that Claude had been mentally preparing himself to say from the moment he’d had his conversation with Byleth nights before, but feeling the hush coming over everyone after he’d said them was not factored into those preparations. “It’s nothing bad, and nothing to do with any of you. You’ve all passed, mind letting me have this talk with him outside while you finish your last shift?”

Collectively they decided that it wouldn’t be too much of a problem to let Claude do as he wanted, and soon enough he and the professor were behind the shop, in the parking lot that employees used. “What a surprise you’ve pulled me aside privately, Claude von Riegan,” Hanneman started, opening his arms out to give a wide gesture. “I assume this is to do with the terms of your enrollment in the class?”

“I finished it, just like you told me I had to, but I realized something important the other night while talking to my girlfriend. I have no need for this class. What good is knowing how to run a business going to do me when I’m off living my life?” Pausing, Claude went over the words he’d told himself he was going to say, looking at Hanneman and judging if it was really for the best that he said them. In the end, he really had no choice but to go big before he went home. “You have blackmailed me, bribed me, made me take your class for the whole year just so that you didn’t have to pay up on repairing my motorcycle that you damaged, and now we’re here at the end. I don’t owe you anything at this point, since I’ve passed your class. Isn’t that right?”

“Correct, those were the terms under which you were enrolled in the course.”

“Then I’m choosing to ask you to fail me.” This had been the plan since he’d told Byleth the whole story of why he was working at the Golden Perk in the first place, and why he needed to get out without screwing everyone else over. “They’re the ones who did all the work, I did help but I wasn’t always focused and I did meet my girlfriend here, so I should be docked points for that. Fail me.”

Hanneman opened his mouth slightly, reaching up to adjust the monocle he wore over his eye. “I’m sorry, but I have never been asked to fail a student by the student themselves. What game are you trying to play here?”

“I don’t pass the class, I don’t fill the terms of the bribe, you’re allowed to get me expelled from the college for not being a resident of Fódlan _or_ having the right papers to be here. You get rid of me and the debt you have, without me benefitting at all.” The kickback had been unexpected, but Claude was prepared to come up with a way to handle it. “I’m planning on leaving Garreg Mach tonight, anyway, so it’s not that big of a deal if you fail me.”

“Let me get this straight. I fail you, I don’t have to pay for your repairs of your motorcycle, I can get the administration to expel you from the school, and you’re fine with this?” It seemed that Hanneman really did not know how to take such a strange request, but the serious face Claude gave him told him that it was legitimate. “Well, I’ve never had a class successfully run the Golden Perk so under-manned, but to only have four passing students? That’s asinine, much like your request is. The college will give the course less funding, future students will not have as many opportunities to take Practical Business.”

“If you don’t fail me, I’ve got some blackmail of my own to provide with the headmaster regarding your treatment of me.” This was Claude’s piece de resistance, the biggest part of why he’d started this gambit in the first place. “You wouldn’t want the administration knowing that you’ve been harassing a _prince_ for over a year, would you?”

The _urk_ sound that Hanneman made came in time with him clutching his chest, and Claude knew that he’d played his cards right. “I’d suspected since the start you had royal ties, but to claim to be an actual prince? How cheeky of you.” After taking some time to calm down, time Claude spent staring him down with the smuggest of looks, Hanneman finally made his decision. “I will fail you for the course, and consider your debt unpaid. But you do not get to go back on your word and have the administration look into our arrangement, is that a deal?”

“I have no plans to go back on anything.” The two men shook on the decision, even though it was clear Hanneman was not fully trusting what Claude said, and Claude wasn’t sure he was going to get out of the situation like he wanted to. There was a very specific reason this gambit had to work in his favor, and it was mostly nothing to do with him.

It was so that he could go back inside and say his farewells to everyone he’d worked with for the past year, assuring them that they’d meet again and he’d be around to help them out if they so needed it. It was so that he could slip out of Fódlan that night, his motorcycle dropped off outside Hanneman’s office so that it was his problem to deal with, his apartment emptied out and most of his belongings left on the side of the road with a “free to a good home” sign attached to them. It was so that he could escape having his past hanging over his head in a country he’d wanted no trouble in. It was so that he could get back home to Almyra and take over the throne in the near future, knowing a bunch of contacts in neighboring Fódlan to call on if he needed to make visits.

And it was so that Byleth could walk into the administrative building the next week, all of her grades turned in and finalized, a written notice of resignation in her hand as she entered Seteth’s office. She slid the paper towards him on the desk and he read it, his eyes shooting up off the paper when he got to the part where she said she was leaving effective immediately. “You took on the job with the intentions of staying long enough to become tenured, did you not?” he asked her, flicking the sheet of paper he held. “What has caused such a quick change of heart, after one year?”

“I want you to know that I loved teaching the students this year, and seeing some of them graduate earlier today made my heart swell with pride. But I found something greater than teaching that seems to be my calling, and I need to be free of this position to pursue those other goals.” She gave him a small smile, while he shook his head in disbelief. “Please, I would hate to go to the headmaster to get this approved, but if you deny me I’ll do just that.”

“Lady Rhea has had such high hopes for you here,” he muttered, reading over the letter of resignation again. “She wanted to see you take on a role of leadership someday. What is there that you could possibly throw this away for?”

“Love,” Byleth replied, “and the chance to be the assistant to the new king of Almyra.”

Seteth’s shock when he heard that had him scrambling to find the royal dossiers he’d sworn he’d seen a particular coffee shop worker in, but before he could say anything about his suspicions the headmaster herself came walking into the office, having overheard everything through the open door leading to her own. “I’ve heard word from Hanneman that the Riegan boy was exactly who we thought he was,” she said, giving no glances toward Byleth. “He did the research now that he was no longer teaching him. How did a royal prince get into Garreg Mach without us being informed beforehand?”

“I…don’t know,” Seteth replied, unable to find the papers he swore he’d had. “But without the documentation, he never was legally a student here, so all of his credits are null and void and he cannot return to this school.”

“And that means that I, a now-former professor here, am allowed to pursue him romantically as he never was a student enrolled in any of the schools.” Byleth looked to Rhea, who seemed completely enraged at hearing such a thing come from someone who’d been employed under her. “Well, that’s enough for me here, my flight to Almyra leaves later tonight and I’d hate to miss it. Thank you very much for the experience this year, but I have found my calling elsewhere.”

As she rose from her seat, it was clear that Seteth and Rhea both were trying to find something to say, but Claude’s gambit with Hanneman had worked to perfection, and he’d allowed for Byleth to get out of her job and any potential legal troubles in one fell swoop. It wouldn’t be an instant thing that he’d become king of Almyra, but when it did happen in the near future, he’d have the former professor-slash-dear girlfriend there at his side as his most trusted confidant, until they could gain the trust of the people enough to take their relationship to another level. And when they came back to Fódlan years later, a happily married couple, they visited Garreg Mach to see how much it had changed; the people were unaware there was a king and queen in their midst as they entered the coffee shop once known as the Golden Perk, sitting at a corner table and snuggling together over overpriced coffees and pastries that were nowhere near as good as the ones Lysithea had made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and there you have it! writing this was a lot of fun--I had planned it long before I had a reason to write it, but now it's finished and I'm so happy with the end result! c:


End file.
